'Rather than' & 'Instead of'

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manu.pant: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 33; Joined: Tue May 04, 2010 12:57 pm

by manu.pant » Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:46 pm

What is the difference in usage of 'rather than' and ' Instead of' in any comparative sentence. I have observed making similar mistake in more than once.

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Sentence Correction | Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:46 pm

crick: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 125; Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:11 pm; Thanked: 8 times

by crick » Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:49 pm

GMAT seems to prefer "rather than" to "instead of".

rather than : used for preference
instead of : used for substitution. It is generally followed by a noun.

Crick

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manu.pant: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 33; Joined: Tue May 04, 2010 12:57 pm

by manu.pant » Fri Aug 12, 2011 7:48 pm

Can you explain the above statement with an example?

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crick: Master | Next Rank: 500 Posts; Posts: 125; Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 6:11 pm; Thanked: 8 times

by crick » Sat Aug 13, 2011 1:57 am

The crux of the matter is:

GMAT prefers "rather than". General principle is to look out for other errors in the choices and if down to two , pick the one with "rather than"

https://www.manhattangmat.com/forums/rat ... t1177.html

Crick

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adi_800: Legendary Member; Posts: 544; Joined: Thu Oct 08, 2009 9:14 amFollowed by: 2 members; Location: Pune, India; Thanked: 31 times

by adi_800 » Sun Aug 14, 2011 9:26 pm

There is no official question that I have come across in which options were wrong on the basis of using instead of or rather than..
GMAT does not test the difference between these two items.... Its just that these two items appear together in the options of the questions released by GMAT..
There would be better reasons to eliminate options that use rather than/instead of..

If you are absolutely left with nothing but to guess the option out of rather than vs instead of..go with rather than but again this is to be done only when you are guessing one out of the two...

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aspirant2011: Legendary Member; Posts: 1574; Joined: Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:52 amFollowed by: 13 members; Thanked: 88 times

by aspirant2011 » Mon Aug 15, 2011 7:00 pm

Instead of is accompanied by noun whereas rather than is accompanied by sub-clause

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