as well as, in addition to, along with

[hari]

Are there any rules that guide the usage of these.

[RonPurewal]

this is an awfully general question - too general to give much of a meaningful answer, in fact - but i'll take a couple of shots at it.

(1) these constructions set up parallel structure: all three of them require grammatical parallelism in the things that come before and after. for instance, in the phrase X as well as Y, X and Y must be parallel.

(2) i'm not 100% sure about this, but my intuition tells me that they should be used preferentially with nouns (or things equivalent to nouns, such as gerunds).

--

your question is in the wrong folder, by the way; this is the gmatprep verbal folder, which is exclusively for verbal problems from the official gmatprep software. i have moved the thread to the proper folder.

[Khush]

Hi Ron,

i know that "x as well as y " connects two (nouns+respective noun modifiers) or only two nouns. Also, the verb form (whether singular or plural verb will be used) depends on y and not on x.

He is x (noun MODIFIER1), as well as y (noun MODIFIER2).

My query is that is it necessary to make noun MODIFIER1 and noun MODIFIER2 parallel for the sentence to be correct?

please help.

[RonPurewal]

My query is that is it necessary to make noun MODIFIER1 and noun MODIFIER2 parallel for the sentence to be correct?

please help.

sure, to the extent possible.

if it's possible to make the items parallel, then they should be parallel (given a sensible context).
The police use helicopters as well as cars.
I'm looking for someone who is humble as well as confident.

[RonPurewal]

on the other hand, you can't put a verb after "as well as". so, in that case, you'll have things that are technically non-parallel.

e.g.,
Few people know that the Smith Firm prepares tax documents, as well as writing the legal briefs for which the firm is best known.

[Khush]

Thank You Ron!

[RonPurewal]

you're welcome.

[cristychopra83]

Hi Ron,

One small query.. wanted to understand if there is any difference in the usage of "and" and "As well as" ? both the forms require parallelism and i understand that "and" could also connect two independent unrelated clauses. but in an example like mentioned below, are both forms correct?

ex : he is x and y OR he is x as well as y.

[RonPurewal]

if you're actually faced with a choice between these, the deciding factor will probably be something else entirely.

one possibility (but certainly not the only one) is that you're facing a singular/plural issue.
if x and y are 2 things that are singular by themselves, then...
..."x and y" is a plural form,
..."x as well as y" is singular, because ultimately it's just 'x'.
('as well as ...' is a modifier. the ONLY word that can join singular things to make a plural thing is 'and'.)

[RonPurewal]

if you're actually faced with a choice between these, the deciding factor will probably be something else entirely.

also, it's very helpful to keep this ^^ in mind in general.

if you see a split between two (or more) constructions in the answer choices, you will VERY seldom be able to decide that split by looking at the constructions themselves.
instead, there will almost always be something else, in another location, that is the deciding factor.

[cristychopra83]

Thanks a ton Ron

[RonPurewal]

you're welcome.