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I am writing a sentence.

All trust evaluation models need to specify their targets, which can be individual agents or agent groups.

Is it necessary to add "either"?

All trust evaluation models need to specify their targets, which can be either individual agents or agent groups.

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  • Both sentences are grammatical English. It might be necessary to include either, but we need to understand the context before we can help you. Please use the edit link to tell us more. Why did you choose the tag british-english? – P. E. Dant Jun 15 '17 at 4:50
  • Edited. I added the tag just because I am currently staying in a British english speaking country. – T D Nguyen Jun 15 '17 at 4:58
  • In this case, the sentence is fine "either" way. – P. E. Dant Jun 15 '17 at 5:05
  • thefreedictionary.com/correlative+conjunction – Khan Jun 15 '17 at 9:32
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It's your choice whether to place "either" or not. However, notice that with "either" included in the sentence the verb (be) can be placed either before "either" or after "either" which makes difference when different verbs are in use:

  • All trust evaluation models need to specify their targets, which can be either individual agents or agent groups.
  • All trust evaluation models need to specify their targets, which can either be individual agents or consist of agent groups.
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Both the sentences are correct, with the same meaning. It's not necessary to add either in the sentence unless you want to put emphasis on the choice of the two given options.

You can use the conjunction "or" or the correlative conjunction "either .... or".

Both the conjunctions connect the two given options. However, the latter puts emphasis on the choice of the two given options.

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Both are right. However you can probably write this way too :

All trust evaluation models need to specify their targets, whether they are individual agents or agent groups.

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