{"id":2397,"date":"2017-03-08T10:33:57","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T16:33:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/?p=2397"},"modified":"2021-07-04T15:19:37","modified_gmt":"2021-07-04T20:19:37","slug":"choices-vs-options-and-alternatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/definitions\/choices-vs-options-and-alternatives\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>Choices<\/em> vs. <em>Options<\/em> and <em>Alternatives<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If a salesperson presents you with three inkjet printers to consider for purchase, is he or she giving you <em>choices<\/em>\u2014or <em>options<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>These two nouns were once more distinct from each other, but the line has blurred as common usage continues evolving.<\/p>\n<p>Today, you will not lose meaning or clarity when using either word to refer to something for selection, particularly in spoken English. However, the careful and accurate writer will acknowledge the difference between <em>choices<\/em> and <em>options<\/em> and reinforce it in practice.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps the easiest way to distinguish <em>choices<\/em> from <em>options<\/em> is to remember that <strong>options are the items or categories from which we choose.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In our sales scenario above, you are making your choice from three options for an inkjet printer.<\/p>\n<p>We can buttress this discussion by continuing your sales scenario. Let\u2019s say you break down and admit to the salesperson that you received a big bonus at work. You\u2019re open to splurging on an even bigger-ticket item than a new inkjet printer.<\/p>\n<p>You express interest in home entertainment, home fitness, and home d\u00e9cor. The salesperson leads you to these areas, which are options among which you\u2019ll make a categorical choice. (Another good topic to review in this context is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/prepositions\/among-vs-between\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Among<\/em> vs. <em>Between<\/em><\/a>. This recent article from January 11, 2017, specifies our grammatical stance on which word to use when writing of two or more people or things.)<\/p>\n<p>On a similar note, a word that can often be switched and confused with <em>option<\/em> is <em>alternative.<\/em> Like <em>choices<\/em> and <em>options<\/em>, these nouns have distinctions.<\/p>\n<p><em>Alternatives<\/em> are the <em>options<\/em> other than one standing alone within a group of them.<\/p>\n<p>To illustrate, let\u2019s say you chose home entertainment as your option for splurging. Your alternatives to home entertainment would have been home fitness and home d\u00e9cor.<\/p>\n<p>With this reasoning, you will always have one more option than alternatives. In our splurging scenario, you had three options, each with two alternatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If a salesperson presents you with three inkjet printers to consider for purchase, is he or she giving you choices\u2014or options? These two nouns were once more distinct from each other, but the line has blurred as common usage continues evolving. Today, you will not lose meaning or clarity when using either word to refer [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-definitions","category-effective-writing"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5124,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397\/revisions\/5124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.grammarbook.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}