Are both of these sentences correct?

She decided to walk rather than take the bus.

She decided to walk instead of take the bus.

The answer?

Yes and no.

Let me explain.

In colloquial or informal daily English conversations, you'll hear both.

And honestly, most people won't hear or notice a difference.

They won't know that one is correct and the other is not.

But if you ever take an exam such as the TOEFL or IELTS, or an exam such as the GMAT to enroll in graduate school in the United States, or if you simply love understanding and using accurate English grammar, then getting it right is essential.

So let's talk about these two similar phrases that cause a lot of confusion and frustration.

If you've ever felt unsure of which one to use or simply avoided them so that you don't make mistakes, you're absolutely not alone.

My students have struggled too, but don't worry.

That's exactly what we're going to overcome with this lesson today.

By the end, you'll have a clear understanding of the differences between instead of and rather than, including exactly how and when to use each of them correctly.

So let's get started.

But before we get there, if this is your first time here, welcome.

I'm Anne-Marie, an English confidence and fluency coach.

Everything I do is designed to help you get the confidence you want for your life and work in English.

If you'd love to get years of lessons just like this and free fluency training resources for me, you can find all of that and more at my Speak Confident English website.

In a moment, we're going to get into the fine details of how to use instead of and rather than with accurate grammar structures.

But first, I want to take a step back and talk about how they are similar but different and in the end, why there's so much confusion between the two.

The truth is the meaning of these two phrases is similar and that is a big reason for the confusion.

But it's important to remember that similar doesn't mean the same.

There is room for difference.

Both can be used to express contrast and preference, making them appear interchangeable at first glance.

However, they do have distinct usage and structure.

Let's talk about each one starting with its usage and meaning.

Rather than is used to indicate preference of one thing over another, emphasizing that you have a choice between two things, two actions or two states of being.

Let's take a look at several examples.

I prefer coffee rather than tea in the morning.

She prefers swimming rather than biking for fitness.

He chose to study rather than go to the party.

When on vacation, I prefer relaxing on the beach rather than racing around to every tourist attraction.

Now let's talk about instead of.

Instead of isn't really used to talk about preference, but rather that one thing was done in place of another.

It's about substitution or replacement.

In other words, one thing is chosen and the other is not.

That's where the emphasis is.

For example, she decided to watch a movie instead of a TV show.

He chose to stay in instead of going out for the night.

Before we get into the grammatical structures we need for accuracy, there are two things I want you to remember here.

First, most of the confusion comes from the interchangeability of these two words.

They, again, can both be used to indicate preference or contrast, but there is a bit of difference in the nuance.

Again, rather than emphasizes the general preference for one thing over another, and instead of is used to emphasize the replacement or substitution of one thing over another.

The second thing to keep in mind is the formality and informality of each one.

The truth is both of them are perfectly appropriate for informal and formal contexts.

However, rather than tends to be used more often in writing, and instead of tends to be used more often in everyday speech.

And now let's transition to the grammatical structures where you're going to see the biggest differences in terms of how to use rather than and instead of.

Let's start with rather than and its importance for maintaining parallel structure in sentences.

Hmm, what exactly is parallel structure, you ask?

Great question.

Imagine driving your car down a highway.

Whether you have two roads going in the same direction, or you have two roads going in the opposite direction, those roads are parallel to each other.

And of course, this allows cars to keep moving forward without crashing into each other.

Can you imagine the chaos and danger of driving in a car if the streets were not perfectly parallel?

Similarly, parallel structure or parallelism reduces chaos in English communication.

Using parallel structure helps with clarity, flow and rhythm, and memorable, impactful statements.

And what this means in a sentence is that you maintain the same pattern of words, whether you're talking about nouns, verbs, gerunds, or adjectives.

Let's go back and review some of the example sentences I shared earlier, plus one extra, to see parallel structure clearly.

When you look at these, I want you to pay attention to the nouns, gerunds, and verbs that come before and after rather than, and notice that they are in parallel structure.

They're maintaining the same pattern.

For example, I prefer coffee rather than tea in the morning.

I have a noun and a noun.

She prefers swimming rather than biking for fitness.

He chose to study rather than go out to a party.

They chose to remain silent rather than cause a scene.

And when on vacation, I prefer relaxing on the beach rather than racing around to every tourist attraction.

What you'll see in those example sentences are two keys to accurate grammatical structure when using rather than.

First, we maintain that parallel structure.

I want to underscore this with two more examples.

I'd like to read a book rather than watch a movie.

We ought to get a bigger vehicle rather than a smaller one.

In all the sentences I've shared so far using rather than, we have that clear parallel structure.

To understand the second key for accurate grammar structures with rather than, we need to review what an infinitive verb is.

An infinitive is the basic form of the verb with to, to run, to walk, to drink, to talk, etc.

So with that in mind, the rule is if you have an infinitive verb before rather than, then the infinitive verb after rather than does not include the word to.

We drop that preposition.

Let me give you a couple of examples to illustrate that.

I need to call customer service rather than email them.

We have to call before rather than, and after rather than, we've dropped the to, and we simply use email.

We saw this in the example, he chose to study rather than go out to a party.

And now let's move on to instead of, which is a little bit more limited than rather than.

And here's why.

These two words together, instead of, are a preposition, and a preposition can only be followed by a noun or a gerund, which is a verb in its ing or noun form.

Instead of cannot be followed by a verb.

Remember, we just talked about those infinitive verbs with rather than.

We can use a verb before and after rather than, and it's no problem, but we can't do that with instead of.

Here's what I mean.

I can say, I drink coffee instead of tea in the morning.

That works perfectly well.

I have a noun before and after instead of.

And I'm also emphasizing that I am replacing one with another.

However, it is incorrect to say, he chose to study instead of go out to a party.

It doesn't work because we're using verbs.

Are you thinking, wait a minute, Anne-Marie, I know I've heard people say, she decided to walk instead of taking the bus.

Isn't that using a verb?

Here, taking is a gerund or the noun form of a verb.

We can change a verb into a noun by adding that ing.

So we're using a noun after instead of.

She decided to walk instead of taking the bus.

This is our little workaround to avoid that incorrect structure with verbs.

Let's go back to the example I shared earlier.

He chose to study instead of go out to a party.

Again, we said that was incorrect.

To make it accurate, we can simply add that gerund form.

He chose to study instead of going out to a party.

Now it's perfectly accurate.

With that, let's take a quick moment to review the keys to accurate grammatical structure with instead of.

If you're going to use instead of, you want to use nouns and gerunds.

For example, I drink coffee instead of tea.

She enjoys swimming instead of running.

And he chose to study instead of going out to a party.

The second key to keep in mind is that instead of is used to indicate a replacement or substitution.

In other words, one thing was done and another one wasn't.

For example, she decided to read a book instead of watching TV.

Or they went hiking instead of visiting a museum.

Now that you have a full picture of how to use rather than and instead of correctly, I've got a quick quiz for you.

Take a look at these two example sentences and tell me which one is correct.

He chose to study rather than go out to a party.

He chose to study instead of going out to a party.

You're exactly right.

They're both perfectly accurate.

In the first one, we're using parallel structure with two verbs on either side.

And in the second, we have changed the verb after instead of into a gerund, making it work just fine.

With this understanding in place, your communication will have more clarity and precision.

It will also be more effective because depending on whether you choose rather than or instead of, your sentences will indicate whether you're talking about a general preference or a substitution of one thing for another.

Lastly, you can be confident in your ability to use these accurately in everyday conversations, in writing, and on those important exams you might take as well.

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Thank you so much for joining me, and I look forward to seeing you next time.