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Is the usage of "neither" instead of "nor" grammatical in these sentences? :

I did not believe his story, but nor did I believe hers.

He didn't deny the reports, but nor did he confirm them.

Because I found these two sentences in pages with the definition of "neither":

I did not believe his story, but neither did I believe hers.

The link to this sentence (conjunction, definition 2 for "neither")

He didn't deny the reports, but neither did he confirm them.

The link to this (the last sentence in the "More examples" section

Or just the usage of "nor" is actually correct here? Please help!

Thank you in advance!

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    I'd expect the but out: I did not believe his story, [but] nor did I believe hers. He didn't deny the reports, [but] nor did he confirm them.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Jan 21, 2022 at 15:55
  • Ok, but can you use "neither" instead of "nor" like in the links?
    – Alex Frt
    Commented Jan 21, 2022 at 15:58
  • 2
    Yes, either neither or nor.
    – Edwin Ashworth
    Commented Jan 21, 2022 at 16:14
  • And are "neither" and "nor" used just as often in this case? Or is there a difference between American English and British English in terms of how often they are used?
    – Alex Frt
    Commented Jan 21, 2022 at 16:24
  • 2
    But neither is the normal use; but nor strikes me as novel, though I don't really know.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Jan 21, 2022 at 16:42

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I'd agree with @JohnLawler's comment

But neither is the normal use; but nor strikes me as novel, though I don't really know.

This is supported by a query to the Google ngram viewer, which shows that "but neither" is much more common than "but nor" (although the latter seems to be increasing recently):

enter image description here

As another point of comparison, here are some counts from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA):

  •  

    • NEITHER: 74071, . NEITHER: 13370, , NEITHER: 9902, BUT NEITHER 3732, ; NEITHER: 716
    • NOR: 88449, , NOR: 27236, . NOR: 11475, ; NOR: 1935, BUT NOR: 118

  • This supports the idea that "but neither" is somewhat rare but "but nor" is much rarer.

  • it supports the idea that , neither is common.

  • It also speaks to your other question about whether "nor" can be used at the beginning of a sentence. COCA indicates it often is.

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  • Many people say that "but nor" is not grammatical because "nor" is already a coordinating conjunction that means "but neither" or "and neither" and therefore "but" shouldn't be here.
    – Alex Frt
    Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 22:30
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    modern linguistics is generally descriptive; that is, you see what educated/native speakers actually do, then you figure out what implicit rules they're using. "Because it doesn't make sense" is not a very reliable way to reason about language ...
    – Ben Bolker
    Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 22:33
  • And also "[comma] neither" usage is considered by many as wrong because "neither" is an adverb, not a conjunction.
    – Alex Frt
    Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 22:43
  • Do you come across the phrase "but nor" and "[comma] neither" often enough to think that the grammatical rules are nonsense?
    – Alex Frt
    Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 22:45
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    I don't think grammatical rules are nonsense. I think that trying to derive them by reasoning forward from "what is logical" is not necessarily going to work.
    – Ben Bolker
    Commented Jan 23, 2022 at 22:50

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