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sentence - How to use the “not only . . . but also” construction?



I’m trying to create the following phrase:



It is important not only to ____ but also to ____ in general.



But the way I’ve written it above doesn’t sound that good to me. Since I’m not a native speaker, could anyone please help me to improve this?



Answer



The “not only X but also Y” correlative conjunction gives copyeditors no end of headaches. The problem commonly encountered with it is that X and Y are supposed to be grammatically parallel, but frequently people mess this up, so it doesn’t read right. So copyeditors are forced to recast the sentence.


In the examples below, I will set the two things which “not only . . . but also” is governing — and which are therefore supposed to be parallel — in bold face.



For example, this would be wrong:



He not only ate shrimp but also cocktail sauce, too. [WRONG]



That doesn’t work because ate is a verb while cocktail sauce is a noun. Instead that should be written as:



He ate not only shrimp but also cocktail sauce, too. [RIGHT]



If you want to alternate on the verb, then one might try this:



He not only ate shrimp but also vomited it, too. [RIGHT, but ick!]



Here’s another wrong example:



I come not only to bury Caesar, but Brutus and Cassius as well. [WRONG]



That’s wrong because “to bury” ≠ “Brutus and Cassius”. They aren’t parallel. That should instead be one of:



I come not only to bury Caesar, but also to praise him. [RIGHT]


I come to not only bury Caesar, but also praise him. [RIGHT]


I come to bury not only Caesar, but also Brutus and Cassius as well. [RIGHT]



Your sentence, however, seems to run afoul of none of these problems, because you are correctly using parallel grammatical pieces in both halves.


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