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Consider the following usages:

  1. Either the book and the pen are neither in the pocket nor in the backpack of either Sally or Peter.

  2. Both the book and the pen are neither in the pocket nor in the backpack of either Sally or Peter.

  3. Both the book and the pen are not in the pocket or the backpack of Sally and Peter.

Which of the three sentences is correct?

What I am trying to mean is that "the book is not in the pocket of Sally; the book is not in the backpack of Sally; the book is not in the pocket of Peter; the book is not in the backpack of peter". And same thing for the book.

Can they be improved?

The question focuses on the word usage and English grammar of "either" or "both". This is strictly not a logic puzzle because meaning is very clear: nothing is the pocket of anyone.

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  • 1
    Duplicated on ELU. english.stackexchange.com/questions/581666/…
    – Kate Bunting
    Dec 23, 2021 at 9:31
  • 3
    None of these is clear. You are breaking a style rule of English. Say one thing at a time. Don't make a sentence do 8 different jobs. I don't think you actually are trying to say this about anyone. I think this is a made up example. So the simplest solution is "don't say that".
    – James K
    Dec 23, 2021 at 10:22
  • #1 and #2 are both syntactically valid (and not that hard for a competent native speaker to parse, but they certainly look "clumsy, ugly"). But #3 is syntactically invalid. Unless we accept that Sally and Peter jointly own a single backpack, in which case neither the book nor the pen are in "the pocket" - and they're not in the jointly-owned backpack either.
    – FumbleFingers
    Dec 23, 2021 at 17:12
  • I’m closing this question because it's not about learning English, and it's been crossposted to ELU, where it has a better chance of getting a helpful answer.
    – gotube ♦
    Jan 2, 2022 at 20:58

1 Answer 1

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None of these sound natural or clear. I agree with
FumbleFingers that 1 and 2 are technically valid, but poor style.

To say what is apparently intended one might write:

  • Neither Sally nor Peter has the book or the pen in his or her pocket nor in his or her backpack.
  • Neither the book nor the pen is in any of Sally's pocket, Peter's pocket, Sally's backpack, or Peter's backpack.

Using multiple sentences will probably read better.

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