Casagrande: Do you use ‘both’ and ‘as well as’? Why these can be a grammar trap

One of the most interesting things about editing work is it forces me to notice all the ways a sentence can go wrong. Here’s an example from an article I did recently: “The flu vaccine can help lower your risk of infection and may reduce both the severity of symptoms as well as the duration of illness.”

A lot of people will home in on the word “both” here, correctly pointing out that it’s unnecessary (at best). No doubt, the sentence seems a lot better if you just delete “both.”

But what interests me about the passage is “as well as.” Replace it with “and” and any problem with this sentence is immediately resolved. The question is: why? If “as well as” works just fine without “both,” why does it beg to be replaced with “and” when “both” is present?

Looking for answers, I checked Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage, which contrary to its name is not a dictionary. It’s a usage guide that examines questionable, controversial and confusing uses of English, concluding about 99% of the time that the usage in question is sufficiently well established to be OK.

I was surprised to see that it has an entry for “both … as well as …,” but disappointed to see that it focused mainly on examining the argument that “both” in this construction is redundant. The Merriam authors say it’s not, and when you consider that “both” before any pair of things is unnecessary —“both coffee and tea” — it’s clear that “both” is used for emphasis.

For the “as well as” part, Merriam’s doesn’t pay as much attention. They defend it in these constructions simply by saying it’s used “in a correlative manner somewhat like ‘and.’”

I don’t often take issue with this usage guide. Its authors went to much better schools than I did. But this time is different. I think that “both … as well as …” is problematic for a reason Merriam’s doesn’t address but that we can home in on by considering the guide’s own language: “correlative, somewhat like ‘and.’”

Being “correlative” doesn’t mean “as well as” can link things the way “and” does: “I like pizza as well as pasta.” Clearly, “as well as” has some, but not all, the properties of “and.”

Certain sentences bring this fact to light: “Peanut butter as well as jelly are good.” No doubt “is” would be the better verb here because “as well as” doesn’t have the same power as “and” to make subjects plural.

“And” is a member of a very exclusive little word group called coordinating conjunctions. Coordinating, not correlating. Coordinating conjunctions coordinate nouns and other parts of speech, as we see in lists like “red, white and blue.” A coordinating conjunction makes a list complete. “Red, white, blue, green, orange, fuchsia and brown”— a coordinating conjunction before the last noun makes the list grammatical.

“As well as” can join things, but often it introduces additional information after coordinate terms: “red, white and blue, as well as gold,” “peanut butter and jelly, as well as banana.”

“As well as” doesn’t “coordinate” nouns, phrases, etc., the way “and” can.

For that reason, it doesn’t necessarily pair with the word “both.” Checking the definition of “both” in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary (not the usage guide), we get to the heart of my objection to the original passage: “‘both’: used as a function word to indicate and stress the inclusion of each of two or more things specified by coordinated words, phrases, or clauses.”

Note they said “coordinated.” In other words, “both” works with the coordinating conjunction “and.” It might work OK sometimes with “as well as,” but usually not.

What, then, did I do with that sentence I was editing? Deleting “both” was an option, but it seemed important to the writer’s meaning. So I just changed “as well as” to “and.”

— June Casagrande is the author of “The Best Punctuation Book, Period.” She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.