I'll never be marrying / I'll be never marrying / I'll never marry

Question

Which out of the 3 options given in title is correct to replace the bold part of below given sentence ?

I'll never be marrying anyone, but will be a dancer.

I guess the structure/tense before and after but should be same so according to this is I'll be never marrying correct ?

This is an error spotting question asked in exam. The question structure was like this : I will never be marrying (A) anyone, but (b) will be a dancer. (C) No error (D) I had to choose one out of four options A, B, C and D.

Answer 1

It's not a very felicitous sentence, no matter how you slice it, but if you can only change one part (or neither) then your best option would be

I will never marry anyone, but will be a dancer.

This structure does have the same tense in both clauses, simple future with "will". The verb in the first part is marry and the verb in the second part is be, so in the corrected sentence we have will [never] marry and will be.

This is a little confusing, because often the verb be is a helping verb, but here it is actually the main verb of the second clause. In the original sentence the two clauses didn't match, even though both had "be", because the first "be" was acting as a helping verb, so marry was in the future progressive tense: will be marrying.

The corrected sentence means something like

I do not plan to ever get married; instead, I will be a dancer.

The sentence is setting up "being a dancer" as an alternative to "marrying anyone", so only one or the other can happen, not both. Note that with this construction we can leave out the repeated subject in the second clause; this is called ellipsis. Some similar examples of the "I will not/never . . . but will" structure:

I will never give my assent to any address of any kind to the throne, but will now, and upon all future occasions of the like kind, divide the House (Debate in the Lords on the King's Message Regarding the Spanish Manifesto, 1779)

I will never be ashamed of my religion, but will always avow it when and where it shall seem proper so to do. (The Church of England Magazine, 1855)

I will not pursue this solution here but will simply suppose that we could adopt it if necessary. (Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, 1992)

This is a very formal and somewhat old-fashioned structure, as you can probably tell from the examples, so you probably won't run across it in casual conversation very often.

Answer 2

Your sentence is incorrect. At the very least you need to add "I" to the second part of the sentence:

I will never be marrying anyone, but I will become a dancer.

This is still awkward, because marriage is a single event in time, but you use it in a continuous sense. It is better to say the following:

I will never marry anyone, but I will become a dancer.

The sentence now is correct, but I think there is one more improvement to make. Because marriage always involves someone else, it is more common for people to say "get married" than "marry anyone." So I think it's slightly better to say:

I'll never get married, but I will become a dancer.

And now, since the sentence is clear and correct, you CAN go back and change it to this if you wish:

I will never get married but will become a dancer.

Be sure you remove the comma and change "I'll" to "I will."

Another correct sentence is this:

I'll never get married, but I'll become a dancer.