Hi everybody,
we have two itmes, A, and B.
( A**** is an old item say “John” working in an office, or a document with revision 0, and B is the new item say “Peter” - a would-be staff, or a document with revision 1)
If I want to use verb “replace”, considering my given examples for A and B:
should I say, " Please replace A with B", or “Please replace B with A” ?
Can the latter be correct? If no, please clarify it grammatically.
Thank you.
No, you would have to say “replace A with B”.
It would also be correct to say:
“A will be replaced by B”
“B should replace A”
“A should be replaced”.
“We need to replace A”
To clarify it grammatically, replace is a transitive verb, i.e. it requires an object. The object is the item that is being replaced, in this case A.
The subject can, depending on the wording of the sentence, either be the replacement item (“B”) or the person(s) who is making the substitution (as in, for example, “We replaced A”).
This can lead to ambiguity, because “replace” can mean either “take the place of” or “put something else in place of”.
So “Alice replaced Bob” could mean either “Alice took the place of Bob”, or “Alice put another person in place of Bob”. In this case you would need to spell it out to make it clear.
It should always be “Replace [old, obsolete] with [new, current].”