| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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2. Style: Parallelism, Passives, Redundancy, and Wordiness
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| § 5. not only … but also |
| As with other correlative conjunctions, you should follow each part of the not only … but also … construction with an element of the same grammatical type. Thus, instead of She not only bought a new car but also a new lawnmower, you should write She bought not only a new car but also a new lawnmower, because in this version both not only and but also are followed by noun phrases. | 1 |
| Leaving out the also from this construction tends to intensify the first part of the construction rather than supplement it: She is not only smart but brilliant. He not only wanted the diamond but wanted it desperately. | 2 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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