word choice - Is "respectively" correct in this sentence? Can it be replaced by "correspondingly"?


I have seen several questions dealing with the use of "respectively" but still I am not sure how to use it.


Example:



We saw two persons, standing on the hill and near the tree, respectively.



I need a word to clarify that not both persons are standing both on the hill and near the tree, but that one person is standing on the hill and the other one near the tree. While this sentence is easy to rewrite (e.g. We saw one person... and another person...), this becomes more difficult in more complicated sentences and when I don't want to repeat longer words.


I was told that "respectively" can only be used in lists and I am not sure if "two persons" can be seen as a list (while "Person A and person B" would be a list). Moreover, I was told to use "correspondingly" instead.


Is "respectively" used correctly in the above sentence? If not, can I replace it with "correspondingly"?



Answer



The term respectively is used in technical-style writing to indicate correspondence between lists, as noted in a comment to your question.


For example, A and B went to C and D respectively means that A went to C and B went to D.


However, the definition of the term (see below, especially the example listed in the dictionary entry) indicates that it can also be used in the manner you describe, where you have a group and associate the members with elements of a list.



Respectively adverb Separately or individually and in the order already mentioned (used when enumerating two or more items or facts that refer back to a previous statement): they received sentences of one year and eight months respectively - ODO



In the dictionary's example, the people referred to collectively by the word 'they' are associated with separate sentences, and the sense is that a different individual is associated with each sentence.


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