5 exercises — practise presenting exclusive alternatives and decisions with whether/either...or.
0 / 5 completed
1 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "whether" to introduce a noun clause expressing an unresolved technical decision?
"Whether to migrate to Kubernetes or stay on the current setup" is correct: "whether" introduces a noun clause naming two clear alternatives, joined by "or", and both branches use the infinitive form consistently ("to migrate" / "[to] stay"). Option A incorrectly combines "if or whether", which is redundant and non-standard — only one of these subordinators is needed. Option B tacks on the meaningless "or not necessary", which breaks the parallel two-option structure the sentence needs. Option D omits "to" before "migrate", which breaks the infinitive parallelism with "to stay" implied later in the sentence.
2 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "either...or" to present two mutually exclusive deployment options with proper parallel structure?
"We can either deploy to staging first or push straight to production" is correct: "either" and "or" must introduce grammatically parallel elements, and here both are bare infinitive verb phrases ("deploy..." / "push...") following the shared modal "can". Option A breaks parallelism by switching from a verb phrase ("deploy to staging first") to a full clause with its own subject and verb ("we push straight to production"). Option C misplaces "either" before "we", which changes the intended scope and sounds unnatural since the shared modal "can" should stay with the subject. Option D places "either" awkwardly between the modal and main verb and then breaks parallelism with the gerund "pushing" instead of the base form "push".
3 / 5
Which sentence correctly reports an unresolved question using "whether" in reported/indirect speech about a technical issue?
"Asked whether the regression tests were passing" is correct: in reported yes/no questions, "whether" introduces the embedded clause and the clause keeps normal statement word order (subject before verb: "the regression tests were passing"), with the tense backshifted to match the reporting verb "asked". Option B incorrectly adds "that" before "whether", which is redundant since "whether" already functions as the subordinator. Option C wrongly inverts the subject and verb ("were the regression tests"), which is question word order and not permitted inside a reported clause. Option D adds an ungrammatical extra pronoun "they" that duplicates the subject "the regression tests" and mixes present tense, breaking backshift consistency.
4 / 5
Which sentence correctly uses "whether or not" to emphasize that a technical outcome holds regardless of a condition?
"Whether or not the previous job has finished" is correct: this fixed phrase emphasizes that the outcome (the cron job running) is unaffected by the stated condition, and "whether or not" can directly precede the subordinate clause. Option B redundantly repeats "it runs" after "or not", duplicating information already given in the main clause. Option C incorrectly combines "if" and "whether", two subordinators that cannot be stacked together. Option D omits the required "or" between "whether" and "not", producing an incomplete and ungrammatical fixed phrase.
5 / 5
A design doc states two mutually exclusive rollback strategies. Choose the sentence with correct "either...or" placement and parallelism.
"Either the deployment rolls back automatically or an on-call engineer triggers a manual rollback" is correct: since the two alternatives have different subjects ("the deployment" and "an on-call engineer"), "either" must precede the first full clause so that each "or"-joined element is a complete, parallel clause. Option B places "either" after the shared subject "the deployment", which wrongly implies both alternatives share that subject, but the second alternative actually has a different subject. Option C keeps correct clause placement for the first part but garbles the second clause's word order ("triggers a manual rollback the on-call engineer"). Option D misplaces "either" at the end of the first clause, disconnecting it from the alternative it should introduce.