Learn English – I am neither robber nor police. Neither I am robber nor police

correlating-conjunctionsneither-norword-order

Which sentence should be correct?

I am neither robber nor police.
Neither I am robber nor police.

I often saw ( neither….nor) is sometimes used in the middle of sentences and sometimes it is used out of sentences as I added two examples here.

Would you like to tell me the reason behind this problem place?

Best Answer

The first sentence "I am neither robber nor police." is the correct form, but the way that I would say it is" "I am neither a robber nor the police."

The problem with the second sentence is that the verb is out of place. A Neither/Nor phrases represents two possible ways to end a sentence: "I am not a robber." and "I am not the police.", but then combines them into the same sentence.

Using an Either/Or or Neither/Nor phrase is a way of combining two different sentences into one. This sentence combines "I am not a robber." with "I am not the police.". The combined sentence now has one beginning: "I am not..." and two endings: "...a robber." and "...the police.".

Either/Or lets you have two endings to the same sentence, and so it becomes: "I am not either a robber or the police." This sounds awkward to our ears which is why we have Neither/Nor for negatives. The "not" distributes over the either and the or and we get neither and nor and thus:

"I am neither a robber nor the police."

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