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Subject:RE: "One of these" versus "Either of these" From:"Stern, Geoff" <GStern -at- NETsilicon -dot- com> To:"'TECHWR-L'" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 18 Apr 2000 09:02:30 -0400
> the words "Do one of the following..." My assumption is that each item in
the list has
> some unique quality. On the other hand, if the word "one" is replaced
with "either",
> then the subconcious seems to say "either one or the other - they are the
same."
Ingteresting. I don't have this reaction at all, but perhaps it's a sense
that is now lost, like the differerence between "persuade" and "convince."
For me, "either" simply implies two choices -- one or the other.
In any case, there is a slight advantage to using "one of the following" in
introducing the list. You may, at some point, have to add a third choice,
in which case you simply bang in another list item. Also, in the days of
conditionalized files for documenting products running on different systems,
you might have three or four methods for doing something (say, command line,
menu item, defined key, and so on) but not all of these would be available
on each platform. You would enclose the odd-man-out in some kind of
condition tag or setting. The intro sentence with "one of the following"
would not have to be conditionalized.
==
Geoff Stern mailto:GStern -at- NETsilicon -dot- com
