Rather than or Instead of

[varun007]

which one is more preferred Rater than or instead of. Please can u tell me the meaning of both the sentence. Is "Rather than in " correct idiom. Please help me.

[prashn]

I've read that "rather than" should be used when comparing verbs. I'm not sure whether "rather than in" is a correct idiom.

[RonPurewal]

which one is more preferred Rater than or instead of. Please can u tell me the meaning of both the sentence. Is "Rather than in " correct idiom. Please help me.

if you're in doubt, you should go with 'rather than', which seems to be the gmat's preferred stock whenever both options are present in a sc problem. (i've never seen a problem with 'instead of' in the correct answer AND 'rather than' in the wrong answers, although i certainly won't say that there are no such problems.)

in general, the rule is as follows:
'instead of' is used with nouns (or things that can stand in for nouns, such as noun phrases).
'rather than' has more general application; it can be applied to just about any parallel structure.

I've read that "rather than" should be used when comparing verbs. I'm not sure whether "rather than in" is a correct idiom.

no, you can do that. the rule is that you have to maintain parallelism, but that's about it.
consider the following:
because of quarantine regulations, the equestrian events of the 1956 summer olympics were held in stockholm, sweden, rather than in melbourne, australia, where all the other events were held.
this is a totally good sentence, with totally good parallelism.