Rather than VS Instead Of

Hi,

Can someone tell me where i can get more information on usage of "rather than" and "instead of."

Thanks,
Amm

Hi,

Can someone tell me where i can get more information on usage of "rather than" and "instead of."

Thanks,
Amm

The "of" in "instead of" is a preposition, and the object of a preposition must be a noun.

So you CAN say:
I want chocolate ice cream instead of vanilla today.
Miguel decided to play guitar instead of drums.
Abhi wants to know when to use the words "rather than" instead of the words "instead of."

But you SHOULDN'T say:
I walked to work instead of drove.
Miguel played guitar instead of drummed.
Abhi embraced the difficulties of grammar instead of gave up.

(See? These are all parallel--two verbs in the same tense. But, it probably even sounds weird to many people that I put a verb after "instead of." My ear is telling me to switch the last words above to driving, drumming or drums, and giving up, but that would ruin the parallelism, so there's obviously some possible difficulty with using "instead of.")

In contrast, "rather than" can compare nouns or verbs, so it's just more likely to be correct.

It's probably most noteworthy that the OG doesn't even mention the rather than/instead of choice in the explanation for questions that have it, except to say that both require parallelism.