Korean Job Discussion Forums

Rapacious Mr. Batstove · Joined: 26 Jan 2007 Location: Central Areola

Even looking in grammar books this has me confused.

Which is one is correct?

He is not a doctor and neither is she.

Or

He is not a doctor and nor is she.

My gut feeling is that neither is correct in this case but, I'm not sure.

Any input is appreciated.

Cheers

SuperHero · Joined: 10 Dec 2003 Location: Superhero Hideout

Rapacious Mr. Batstove · Joined: 26 Jan 2007 Location: Central Areola

[/quote]
He is not a doctor and neither is she. - correct
He is not a doctor nor is she. correct - notice the and is removed.[/quote]

Thanks.

So...these are also correct then?

He is not a doctor, neither is she.
He is not a doctor, nor is she.

soju pizza · Joined: 21 Feb 2007

I'll take a stab at this. Don't know if I'm right or not though:

"He is not a doctor, nor is she."
"Nor" is operating as a coordinating conjunction connecting two independant clauses therefore it can have the comma. The comma is not required though because the idea is not very complex. It is gramatically correct though.

"He is not a doctor, neither is she."
I think this is called a comma splice. "Neither" is not a coordinating conjunction but it's incorrectly operating as one. You can fix it by inserting a conjunction. Maybe put "and" or "but" before it:
"He is not a doctor, and neither is she."

Maybe you could switch them:
"Neither he nor she is a doctor."

Rapacious Mr. Batstove · Joined: 26 Jan 2007 Location: Central Areola

Thanks for the help guys.

I'm no expert on grammar, and strongly support fluency over accuracy. A teacher from my school wanted me to talk to her friend on the phone to discuss the neither/nor issue this morning and I needed clarification, I really wasn't in the mood to discuss grammar at 9am.

ron_j · Joined: 02 Mar 2007

neither and nor are correlative conjunctions. Correlative conjunctions pair up with each other. either/or, not only/but also, both/and.

So, wouldn't it be: Neither he nor she is a doctor.

Jizzo T. Clown · Joined: 27 Mar 2006 Location: at my wit's end

I think it's easy to get away from the way *real* English is spoken. Most people don't talk like this, and if the situation came up, we'd most likely have context to work with, or say something like: "No, neither one of them is a doctor." But then, if you're writing, that's a different story.