| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. |
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
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3. Word Choice: New Uses, Common Confusion, and Constraints
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| § 52. both |
| Both indicates that the action or state denoted by the verb applies individually to each of two entities. Both books weigh more than five pounds, for example, means that each book weighs more than five pounds by itself, not that the two books weighed together come to more than five pounds. Both is inappropriate where the verb does not apply to each of the entities by itself. | 1 |
| both their fault / the fault of both. How do you make possessives for both? See
possessives under Grammar. | 2 |
| both … and …. See
parallelism under Style. | 3 |
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| The American Heritage® Book of English Usage. Copyright © 1996 by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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