Neither/ Either

That you have to have two entities only when you use "neither ... nor" is debated. Many people consider it fine to use "neither ... nor" with more than two.


In this case, the collective noun "staff" is not used for naming a singular entity. The staff itself would not be "involved." The individual staff members would. So, "staff" is understood to be plural here, and thus using "were" makes sense.

Considering that I have understood your questions correctly [:)], these are the examples:

- I can choose any one Entrée - fish or chicken. I can have either of them.
- Jane has two sisters. She stays with neither of them.

I think he was asking about which verb (singular or plural) to use.

so to follow up w/ your example:

I can choose any one entree: fish or chicken. either [of them] is tasty
Jane has two sisters. Neither is attractive. You wouldn't say "Neither are attractive" even though it seems like you want to refer to both sisters...

think of it this way:

Neither [of the sisters] is attractive. Neither (or either) is the pronoun that always commands a singular verb. "of the sister" is just a middle-man (prepositional phrase).

Example:

Harvard and Stanford are excellent business schools. However, I'm not applying since neither of them is going to accept me in their program.

Some examples below

Neither of them is going to the show tonight.

Either of us is capable of answering the question.

Hi experts,

I have a question on this topic here. I ran across a sentence on an MIT technology review article today, and I wanted to get clarification on this: Within the following, is it grammatical to have this usage of "neither...nor"?

"...neither program heads, department chairs, attending physicians, nor nursing staff were involved in the original algorithm design."

(1) there are multiple people here, but neither/nor (and either/or) has to have two entities. (2) if we assume that what comes after the neither is correct, isn't the verb after staff incorrect? Shouldn't it be "was?" "Neither/nor" depends on what comes after the nor part - i.e., if it's singular, we need a singular verb. if it's plural, we need a plural verb.

MartyTargetTestPrep GMATNinja egmat AjiteshArun

Hi Experts ,

Can anyone throw some light on the usage of Neither and Either without NOR and Or respectively .

Little bit confused

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