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What is the correct way to say it: "I will not do it nor do that", "I will do neither it nor do that" or some other way?

Edit: I think I did not expressed my doubts well. What I am looking for is whether it is possible to use "neither" or "nor" between two subordinate clauses, such as in "I will not buy groceries neither eat at a restaurant".

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Possible duplicate of Usage of "neither... nor" versus "not ... or", though this one is admittedly a bit broader. – RegDwighт Jan 27 '11 at 20:14
It should be neither of two actions :) – Jimi Oke Jan 27 '11 at 22:28
RedDwight, I clarified the question a bit. Do you think it is a possible duplicate yet? I am used to Stack Overflow, it is a bit harder to know how to ask questions about English and I don't know if I am doing something wrong... – brandizzi Jan 29 '11 at 15:42

3 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

For your example, you'd say

I will neither buy groceries nor eat at a restaurant.

In the general case, the rule-of-thumb is to phrase the sentence as "I will neither X nor Y", where X and Y are phrases containing verbs that could independently form the two sentences "I will not X" and "I will not Y". (In our sentence, X = "buy groceries", Y = "eat at a restaurant").

In case both X and Y begin with the same verb (say buy), you can pull out the verb so that it distributes over the neither-nor construction:

"I will neither buy groceries nor buy shoes." —>
"I will buy neither groceries nor shoes."

"I will neither eat in the park nor eat at a restaurant." —>
"I will eat neither in the park nor at a restaurant."

"I will neither do this nor do that." —>
"I will do neither this nor that."

etc.

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How about this: 'I will do neither'?

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1  
This only works if the options were previously presented. Is it not possible to present both options in just one setence with subordianted clauses? – brandizzi Jan 29 '11 at 15:49

You could always simply say "I won't do either of those".

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