word choice - Usage of "neither . . . nor" versus "not . . . or"


First, this is not a dupe of:


"Not bad either" versus "not bad neither"


nor a dupe of:


"Neither Michael nor Albert is correct" or "Neither Michael nor Albert are correct"?


So on to my question...


I'm not a native english speaker and there's something that I always find very strange when I read sentence containing the following construct:



"and try not to be shocked or overreact if..."



Isn't something using "neither/nor" better, like maybe the following:



"and try neither to be shocked nor overreact if..."



To me the first sentence can be interpreted in two ways:




  • you should either try not to be shocked or you should overreact (wrong of course, this is not what the writer meant but in other case it is not that obvious that it is a wrong interpretation




  • you should try not to be shocked and you should also not overreact




while with the second sentence, there's no room for interpretation (once again, in this case in the first sentence it can be deduced from the sentence but I often encounter cases where it is not so).


So... not/or or neither/nor?




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