. . . committed in The New York Times:
“There are splits both within the intelligence agencies and the congressional committees that oversee them.”
“Both” splits a sentence into two streams that have to be equal and parallel. At first glance, either of the following would have been correct:
“There are splits within both the intelligence agencies and the congressional committees that oversee them.”
But no, that wouldn’t have worked because “both the intelligence agencies” can be misread as “You mean the CIA and the NSA?”
So the only correct option (short of rewriting the whole sentence), redundant as it may seem, is:
“There are splits both within the intelligence agencies and within the congressional committees that oversee them.”
Actually, I should refine the rule above:
“Both” splits a sentence into two streams that have to be equal and parallel. The split must be executed by a correctly placed “and.”
A family member of mine who committed this related form of “both” abuse in print—
“sharing their stories online was both an attempt to sort out what they were going through but also to . . . help other[s]”
graciously changed “but” to “and” after I apologized for being so pinheaded as to point it out.
Next, I’ll tackle “between” abuse, if I haven’t already. But I need to assemble some good examples. Like “both,” “between” requires “and,” and you wouldn’t believe the exotic substitutes writers come up with. (Yes, we are now allowed to end a sentence with a preposition, though some friends of mine who are made of sterner stuff still refrain and disapprove.) Scientists in particular seem prone to writing the likes of “Between 5 to 24 seconds . . .”
Stay tuned, fellow pinheads.
The Compulsive Copyeditor 