Be careful where you place the word "either"

Which sentence is correct (my emphasis)?

  1. You can either have a small keyboard, like that on a Blackberry Bold 9900, or a slide-out keyboard, which makes for a heavier and thicker phone, like the Samsung Epic.

  2. You can have either a small keyboard, like that on a Blackberry Bold 9900, or a slide-out keyboard, which makes for a heavier and thicker phone, like the Samsung Epic.

As the New York Times's standards editor, Philip Corbett, pointed out yesterday, the latter is correct. The reason: Spelled-out, the first sentence means,

You can either have a small keyboard or you can a slide-out keyboard

Spelled-out, the second sentence means,

You can have either a small keyboard or you can have a slide-out keyboard.


In technical terms, as Corbett puts it, "The phrases aren’t parallel—after either we have verb plus object; after or there’s no verb, just the object."

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