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A successful BBC TV programme is not only watched by millions in Britain, but is seen by millions more all over the world as well.

Can I delete the second is?

And the sentence became that

A successful BBC TV programme is not only watched by millions in Britain, but seen by millions more all over the world as well.

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  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
    – ColleenV
    Commented Feb 20, 2019 at 14:54

1 Answer 1

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In this example, the two versions are pretty much identical in meaning. In a slightly more complex example, you may need to include the second is in order to dis-ambiguate.

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  • In spoken English, it's more common to use ellipsis and remove extraneous sentence components—everything being equal. So, in this case, the second version flows better and is probably how more people would phrase it. Repeating is here, while correct, sounds slightly stilted.
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Feb 20, 2019 at 19:32
  • Can you tell me what is the meaning of word 'dis-ambiguate' which I can not find in my dictionary?
    – Y. zeng
    Commented Feb 21, 2019 at 0:57
  • @Y.zeng Disambiguate is commonly spelled without a hyphen—as here. When something is ambiguous, it can have more than one interpretation. When you disambiguate it, you rephrase it in such a way that there is only a single interpretation (or at least only a single likely interpretation).
    – Jason Bassford
    Commented Feb 21, 2019 at 2:04

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