Prev | Current Page 156 | Next

Bechtel, John Hendricks, 1841-

"Slips of Speech : a Helpful Book for Everyone Who Aspires to Correct the Everyday Errors of Speaking"

Their use in any other connection is
considered inelegant. "As far as I am able to judge, he would make a
very worthy officer." This is a very common error. The sentence should
be, "So far as I am able," etc.
As is often followed by so. "As thy days, so shall thy strength be."
So... as
In such negative assertions as, "This is not as fine a tree as that,"
the first as should be changed to so. Say, "She is not so handsome as
she once was." "This edition of Tennyson is not so fine as that."
Either, Neither
The correlatives either, or, and neither, nor, are employed when two
objects are mentioned; as, "Either you or I must go to town to-day,"
"Neither James nor Henry was proficient in history."
"He neither bought, sold, or exchanged stocks and bonds." The sentence
should be, "He neither bought, sold, nor exchanged stocks and bonds."
"That is not true, neither." As we already have one negative in the
word not, the word neither should be changed to either, to avoid the
double negation.
A negative other than neither may take either or or nor as its
correlative, "She was not so handsome as her mother, or so brilliant
as her father.


Pages:
144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168