Words and phrases that always work together as pairs or more

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First, an apology. Maybe you didn't notice, but I failed to write a second article in May. It was scheduled to publish May 25, but the Uvalde, Texas, shooting had taken place the afternoon of May 24. It wasn't the right time. I hope you understand. Now, on to some grammar.

Some things just work better together. Peanut butter and jelly. Ice-cold beer and a hot grill. Tom Cruise and figher jets. Kanye West and ... well, bad example.

The same is true in grammar, writing, and speaking. Certain words and phrases can only be used with others or must be written or spoken in a particular way. Although langauage is loaded with them, I'm focusing on four today that you might not have heard of or thought much about.

Correlative conjunctions

Whether you know it or not, you are familiar with correlative conjunctions. You might even be using them correctly! One of the three main types of conjunctions, correlative conjunctions connect two parts of a sentence of equal importance.

As their name suggests, these conjunctions indicate a correlation between two subjects or two verbs in your sentence. And they always come in pairs. "Whether/or" at the beginning of this section is one of most common.

Here are some other widely used correlative conjunctions:

• Not only/but also. "He is not only handsome but also talented."
• Both/and: This involves two subjects performing the same action. "They are both going to the show and taking the same car."
• Neither/nor. Links two negative statements. "I will neither vote in the election nor talk about the election."
• Either/or. Connects positive statements. "She is either working out in the basement or cutting the grass outside."

?? MISTAKE ALERT ?? Correlative conjunctions can play tricks on your mind when you're trying to figure out subject-verb agreement. A frequent slipup occurs when you have multiple subjects. Be sure the subject closest to the verb agrees. "Both the women and their children walked to the park."

?? MISTAKE ALERT II ?? It's important to maintain parallel sentence structure with these conjunctions. Wrong: "I like not only voting in elections but also I like to watch." Right: "I like not only voting in elections but also watching the results." In the first example, "voting" and "I like" are not parallel while in the second example, "voting" and "watching" are parallel.

Collocations

Some words are written or spoken together so often, we become to know them as a unit that means something specific. (No, we're not talking about "Elon Musk" always appearing with the word "controversy.") In English, these phrases are called collocations. Native speakers pick them up over time, whereas they might seem nonsensical to people just learning the language.

Language is hard enough to learn. When we have phrases like "break the ice" or "catch a train," it can make it that much tougher. I mean, we're not really breaking ice when we start a conversation or physically catching a train to go to work (hopefully it's already stopped!).

Collocations come in many forms. You'll likely not even know you're using them until you use them incorrectly (For example, saying "leaping to conclusions" instead of "jumping to conclusions.")

Phrasal verbs

You're already familiar with phrasal verbs. You use them every day. A phrasal verb is a simple verb followed by another word or words that creates a phrase that doubles as your verb, thus "phrasal verb."

Why do these phrasal verbs matter? English has three types of phrasal verbs:

1. A verb plus an adverb
2. A verb plus a preposition
3. A verb plus an adverb plus a preposition

In speech and writing, they should be treated differently than their root verb. Let's look at an example, starting with the verb "come."

1. Verb + adverb: Come by = visit
2. Verb + preposition: Come across = to stumble upon or find something unexpectedly
3. Verb + adverb + preposition: Come down with = to get sick

Even though phrasal verbs work together to form your sentence's verb, they can be separated in some instances (mostly just the verb-adverb phrasal verbs). Take, for example, the phrasal verb "turn on."

?? "Can you turn the radio on."

Non-reversible word pairs

Ever heard of a non-reversible word pair? Sometimes they’re called irreversible word pairs.

They are good to know. Here’s how they work:

Non-reversible word pairs are two words always used together in the same order. If you swapped how they were spoken or written, you’d sound like a doofus.

Here are a few common word pairs:

???black and white

???down and out

???law and order

???life or death

???null and void

???rain or shine

Imagine if they were reversed in a sentence:

?? “It was a matter of death or life.”

?? “The event will be held shine or rain.”

?? “His breach made the contract void and null.”

See how that works.

Basically, irreversible word pairs have been used together so long and so often, they don’t sound right any other way. Even if you use them in a grammatically correct manner, they shouldn’t be reversed.

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