Use of "respectively" twice

Is it correct to use respectively in this way in a written text?

The first month of Spring (respectively Summer) is March (respectively June).

Could you please point to some examples where it is used.

Solution 1:

The example you give is perfectly clear and understandable, but I very much doubt any native speaker of English would ever use respectively in that manner. Therefore, I think it’s fair to say that it is at least unidiomatic, if perhaps not quite ungrammatical.

The way you’ve used respectively here is very similar to how, for example, German can use beziehungsweise (bzw.), but the similarities between respectively and beziehungsweise do not include this usage.

In English, when two things are being compared in a ‘parallel’ manner like this, respectively is only used once in total: either after both parallel pairs, or before the latter half of each pair.

To clarify and expand a little, let’s say we have these four pairings:

Seasons — Months
Spring — March
Summer — June
Autumn — September
Winter — December

Imagine the pairs as a spreadsheet or as tabular data. The rows represent the connection between seasons and months, while the columns represent seasons and months individually. The simplest, default way of summing up the relationship between the columns using words would be one row at a time: “The first month of spring is March; the first month of summer is June”, etc.

Respectively can be used to sum up several rows at once. When doing so in English, first list all the entries in the Seasons column as a simple list (“A, B, C, and D”); then list all the entries in the Months column in the same manner, adding respectively either before or after this entire list.

Unlike some other languages, respectively is not used when listing the Seasons column, only the Months column; and it also cannot intervene between the individual items in the list.

In other words, the standard way to say what you’re trying to say is either of:

The first month of spring, summer, autumn, and winter is March, June, September, and December, respectively.

The first month of spring, summer, autumn, and winter is, respectively, March, June, September, and December.

(Whether you write “the first month of … is” or “the first months of … are” doesn’t really matter; both are fine.)

Solution 2:

The form illustrated is fairly well established in scientific and mathematical writing. While it usually is understandable it often is distracting and unclear. Frequently, rewriting the sentence to state the alternative elliptically is better. For example:

The first month of Spring is March; of Summer, June.
or
The first month of Spring is March, and that of Summer is June. rather than
The first month of Spring (respectively Summer) is March (respectively June).

Note that in this case, the forms shown are shorter and smoother than the original.

Here is an example (from a Google Books search showing many such) that illustrates the form as often used in academic papers:

In the search to the right (respectively, left), we determine the subset containing R(Ui) (respectively, L(Ui)) as follows. Mark a block full (respectively, partial) if all (respectively, part) of its endpoints are marked. – Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science: 18th International Workshop, ed. Ernst Mayr, 1993, page 15 (Wen-Lian Hsu)