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There is a situation where I have never worked out the correct thing to do. For example, here is a sentence I just used in a comment on Stack Overflow:

The 'strong disagreement' was about using those methods in this (or indeed most) cases.

If (or indeed most) were removed from the sentence, it should read..

The 'strong disagreement' was about using those methods in this case.

However, if the bracketed part is left in, it just does not seem to 'read right' unless 'case' is plural, as in the first quoted text.

Is there a proper way to handle this?

If not, how could that first sentence be reworded, restructured or changed, to remove the problem?

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You can either make the "prefixed" portions all match the word they are prefixing:

The 'strong disagreement' was about using those methods in this (or indeed in any) case.

Or you can eliminate the use of "prefixes" by repeating the target word:

The 'strong disagreement' was about using those methods in this case, or indeed in most cases.

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  • (chuckle) It all seems so obvious when you put it like that. Yes, both ways work well. Thanks very much. :)
    – Andrew Thompson
    Commented Oct 18, 2013 at 16:08
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    There's no point in doing conjunction reduction when it complicates the grammar. Conjunction reduction is for cases where it simplifies the grammar.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Oct 18, 2013 at 16:20

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