Today's paper had a usage that seems very foreign to me, and seems wrong. Is it an acceptable usage? Is it familiar to you?

The task force also used the bankruptcy to overhaul GM's capital structure. This critical move greatly reduced the company's crushing debt load, substituting it with new equity instead.

In the phase "substituting it with", the with sounds out of place. It would be grammatically proper (but would reverse the meaning) to change it to "substituting it for". I would have written "replacing it with" or "substituting for it".

Thoughts and comments?

I have never heard of any grammatical stricture against the use of "substituting with" and the phrase seems perfectly OK to me. However, when I Googled "substituting with" I only got around 30K Ghits, but got about 655K when I searched for "substituting for". The latter use seems the more common, therefore.

I would always use "replace with" or "substitute for".

I would have used "replacing it with."

What's wrong with simply "substittuing"?

"Substituting it with" sounds okay to me.

I'm with Proof -- "substituting a new equity..."

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I'm with Proof -- "substituting a new equity..."

Substituting a new equity for what? To be grammatically accurate I would suggest the phrase should read, "...substituting new equity for the crushing burden of debt..."

Of course, the meaning can be inferred from the entire paragraph but that doesn't mean that the paragraph is grammatically accurate - and it is certainly not very stylish.

quote:

Substituting a new equity for what?

The move reduced X, substituting Y instead.
Sounds pretty clear to me that Y has been substituted for X.

"With" and "for" are probably both grammatical, but, to me at least, "for" seems less awkward, which means it's probably just a matter of what one is used to hearing.

Wordmatic

I agree the original phrasing sounded a little clunky but I wouldn't read "substituting with" as having the same meaning as "substituting for".

In the recipe you can substitute margarine for butter.

That means, to me, that the recipe calls for butter but you can use margarine.

In the recipe you can substitute margarine with butter.

That means, again to me, that it calls for margarine but you can use butter.

You are completely right, Bob. I hadn't thought of it that way. I take back my response above.

Saw this example today:

quote:

U.S. troops have grown very adept at passing out stuff to children -- chocolate, soccer balls, school supplies -- over the last several wars. None of that says a single thing about the importance or the prospects for any military endeavor. To believe otherwise is to substitute reasoning for emotion, which is deeply irresponsible in matters of life and death.

quote:

U.S. troops have grown very adept at passing out stuff to children

If they do it when they come home, they'll get arrested.

One of my earliest memories was of US arrmed forces personel handing out such unheard of luxuries as chewing gum to we children. I can even remember the name of the two who were billeted with us: Wally and Boobly, they were called, although I have no idea how they spelled their names.

I've no idea what happened to them after the war, but my 65-year-old memories of them are still clear.