Writing about Meghan Markle and the Duchess of Cambridge in the Sunday Times, India Knight wrote: ‘I can’t help but be reminded of the relationship between Diana, Princess of Wales, and Sarah, Duchess of York.’ Reporting on the Ashes for the Guardian, Geoff Lemon wrote: ‘I still can’t help but think that England are going to completely implode within the first hour.’ Reviewing A Christmas Carol in the Times, Dominic Maxwell wrote: ‘You can’t help but grin as a new Scrooge springs to life.’
To me this seems wrong. When a little string of syntactic instructions becomes opaque it can be almost universally misused. You may say I can’t love you or the opposite: I can’t help loving you. I can’t but love you means the same as I can’t help loving you. So I can’t help but love you should mean the same as I can’t help not loving you.
The choice should be between I can’t help loving you, which is idiomatic, and I can’t but love you, which sounds a bit old-fashioned.
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