Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
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Proofreading Service - Pain in the English
Proofreading Service - Pain in the English

Your Pain Is Our Pleasure

24-Hour Proofreading Service—We proofread your Google Docs or Microsoft Word files. We hate grammatical errors with a passion. Learn More

replaced by or replaced with

A colleague just asked me which of the statements below was correct:

“System A will be replaced by System B” or

“System A will be replaced with System B” 

Note that in this context System A and System B are competing software packages that are removed / installed by third parties. System B does not install or remove System A. 

I thought that either was correct - is this right? I could not tell her which was better or why or in what contexts I would choose ‘by’ over ‘with’ or vice versa. Can anyone propose guidelines for usage?

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Strangely, dictionaries don't seem to be a lot of help here. According to Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary it looks as though they're interchangeable -
'replace somebody/something with/by somebody/something -
"It is not a good idea to miss meals and replace them with snacks." '

But Longman's has this example - "They replaced the permanent staff with part-timers".- where I don't think "by" would work.

And in this example from the Free Dictionary - "the manual worker is being replaced by the machine" - I'm not sure "with" would really work.

And here are two from Merriam-Webster's:
"I replaced the old rug with a new one."
"Paper bags have been largely replaced by plastic bags."

In fact all the active examples with a preposition I can find in dictionaries have "with", and all the passive ones have "by". So It looks to me as if "with" goes better with active clauses and "by" with passive clauses.

Ngram certainly suggests that in the passive "replaced by" is much more common than "replaced with" - http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=replaced+with%2Creplaced+by&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

And it seems to me to do the opposite in the active, but I'm not 100% sure about how to do a wild card here. - http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=replace%3D%3Ewith%2Creplace%3D%3Eby&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=

There is a suggestion on another forum that in the passive version, if the thing doing the replacing is the agent, it should be "by", but in the plastic bags example, the bags are hardly the agent, so I don't really go along with that.

And the commenter then gives this example - "Employees were replaced with robots" - which seems to work, but compare it with the Free Dictionary's very similar - "the manual worker is being replaced by the machine"

The Free Dictionary example and the second M-W examples are about general situations, and the "employees" example is about a specific occasion, so perhaps that might also have something to do with it.

Warsaw Will Nov-16-2012

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Re: "...so It looks to me as if "with" goes better with active clauses and "by" with passive clauses...", I'm not sure that really tells the whole story, but it certainly seems on the right track. I'd like to propose the following (completely without justification):

"Paper bags have been largely replaced by plastic bags."

means that paper bags are no longer used. Plastic bags are now in common use, serving the same purpose, making paper bags obsolete.

"Paper bags have been largely replaced with plastic bags."

means that paper bags were, say, physically on the shelves in some actual storeroom, and someone removed most of them, putting plastic ones in their place.

Just a thought.

porsche Nov-22-2012

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@Thomas Smith - I have some sympathy for your argument, and I've seen it elsewhere, but in these dictionary examples can we really call the machine or the plastic bags agents? They are hardly the ones doing the replacing. Aren't they just like your robots?

"the manual worker is being replaced by the machine" - the Free Dictionary
"Paper bags have been largely replaced by plastic bags." - Merriam-Webster

Or have these dictionaries simply got it wrong?

Warsaw Will Nov-21-2012

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If we cast everything into the active voice, there is no confusion.

a) I replaced the old rug with a new one. -> The old rug was replaced with a new one.

b) Plastic bags replaced paper bags. -> Paper bags were replaced by plastic bags.

So, the question is NOT "with" vs "by". The real question is whether

A) Somebody replaces X with Y.

or

B) Y replaces X.

When cast in the passive voice, (B) becomes "X is replaced by Y".

user107064 Jul-25-2018

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@porsche - and rather a good thought, I think. And there might be a good reason. In your second example, we know that somebody (or some people) 'actively' replaced them, so it would be strange to think of the bags as agents. In the first example, however, it's more a process, where perhaps the agent is not so clear. Just another thought.

Warsaw Will Nov-23-2012

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