Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009

From the Washington Post Weekly:

 A new unit, called the Transaction Development Group, did its part
 by taking advantage of gaps between securities regulation and tax
 laws in the United States as well as in other countries.

In my book, that would have to mean that in various countries,
including the US, there were gaps between securities regulation and
tax laws.  But I had seen too much slovenly use of "as well as" to be
confident of that, even before reading the next sentence:

 Financial Products associates noticed, for instance, that they
 could make money by exploiting differences between U.S. and
 British definitions of stocks and bonds.

Evidently, "between" is not followed up by "and", but by "as well
as".  Presumably the writer started out with

 ...gaps between securities regulation and tax laws in the United
 States and in other countries.

and then said "the first 'and' gets in the way of associating
'between' with the second 'and', so I'll put the second 'and' on a
pedestal by changing it to 'as well as'".

This is an exceptionally distracting consequence of the slovenly use
of "as well as" that Fowler complained about so long ago as 1927 (see,
e.g., MEU s.v. both).  It seems to have become standard, and probably
most of you will wonder what I am objecting to.  So, for the record,
there is still at least one old fart for whom "as well as" is not a
beefed-up synonym of "and", but corresponds roughly to "in addition
to".  "The cat as well as the dog" is a way of recasting "not only the
dog, but also the cat" so that the cat gets mentioned first.  So it
has to be "The cat as well as the dog was (not were) asleep", and it
is absurd to say "between the cat as well as the dog" or "both the cat
as well as the dog".

The right solution to the reporter's problem (excuse me, the right
resolution to his issue) would be

 ...taking advantage of the fact that securities regulation and tax
 laws differed between the United States and other countries.