I am correcting a translation for a friend. He wanted to say:
"Don't look for treasure nor earthly pleasure."
This sounds wrong to me. I would say:
"Look not for treasure nor earthly pleasure."
The following would be correct: "Don't look for treasure or earthly pleasure,"
but he wants to use "nor" for emphasis.
I have lived abroad for 35 years and so my grammar has slipped. All I have left to go on is how things sound. Which of these is right?
Best Answer
Both of the following seem fine:
The following seems odd:
Consider a plain example:
If I have no pen and no pencil:
or
But the negation is perfectly clear in the first example of the two. In fact, that's what we usually say it, right?
I often see sentences such as the following:
I consider this to be maybe a form of hypercorrection. Just a hunch, but people seem to be very apprehensive about the use of "or" recently, perhaps as a result of the growing influence of legalese on regular language.