One way to think about "nor," and its partner "neither," is to focus on their first letter. The n stands for not, none, negative, nope, nada. So "nor" indicates a lack of something—items you don't have, actions you cannot perform. Almost always, "nor" is paired with "neither." For example, "He can neither read nor write" means he cannot read, and he cannot write. "Neither Jack nor Jill came to school today" means that Jack was not at school, and Jill was also not at school. A classic example of neither/nor comes from the translation of an ancient Greek phase that has become associated with postal workers: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
"Or," on the other hand, indicates a choice among two or more possible options. It does not have to be paired with "either," but it cannot be paired with "neither" (with rare exceptions). For example, both of these sentences are grammatically correct:
"Would you like either cake or ice cream?"
"Would you like cake or ice cream?" The use of "either" is optional.
Both of these sentences are grammatically incorrect:
"I would like cake nor ice cream."
"I would like either cake nor ice cream."
Generally, always pair "nor" with "neither" ("neither ______ nor ______ ...") and you'll be fine. There are some tricky subject-verb agreement issues associated with either/or and neither/nor. For more help with those:
http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/correlativeconjunction.htm
Good question. In English, "or" can be used on its own to indicate that there is a choice offered between two options, or that either of several options would suffice for a purpose:
"You can have an apple or a banana."
"Do you want to go come with me or not?"
"Have you got a brush or a comb I could use?"
We use "nor" when we are saying that these options do NOT exist, and, crucially, "nor" must be paired with "neither," unless "neither" is implied as in some archaic phrases (which I will discuss in a moment). For example:
"We have neither apples nor oranges."
We could also formulate this sentence using "or" and "either," as follows:
"We do not have either apples or oranges."
In the first option, the negation in the sentence is provided by "neither... nor." In the second option, we have to include an additional word to show negation ("not"). So using "neither... nor" is a more succinct choice.
In some idiomatic phrases, we do see "nor" used without "neither," as:
"We haven't seen hide nor hair of him."
More correctly, however, this should be EITHER:
"We haven't seen either hide or hair of him."
OR
"We've seen neither hide nor hair of him."
So, in short, in a phrase where two options are positively offered, "or" MUST be used—we cannot offer "apples nor oranges" as this implies a negative without the construction being accurate. In a phrase where we are saying we cannot offer either of the options mentioned, we can either use a "neither... nor" construction, or we can use "either... or" and add negation to the sentence in another way, by adding "never" or "not."
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