‘America stays largely silent or tiptoes around the unquiet realm of race’ (Straits Times, 22 March 2008).
Wrong: America cannot stay silent around the unquiet realm of race, but it can stay silent on it. Since the verbs stays and tiptoes take different prepositions, they cannot share a single one, so we need to recast the sentence (the commas are optional):
America stays largely silent on, or tiptoes around, the unquiet realm of race.
Similarly, it would be wrong to say:
Kate loves reading and experimenting with new technology.
Rather, we should say:
Kate loves reading about and experimenting with new technology.
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