并不是...
Reach for 并不是 when you want to push back against an assumption — 'actually, it's not...' or 'it's not really the case that...' The 并 dials up the emphasis, signaling that the speaker disagrees with what the listener might have thought. It's stronger than a plain 不是 and very common in opinion pieces, polite disagreement, clarifications, and any sentence shaped like 'contrary to what you'd expect, X is not Y.' The phrase being negated comes right after, often a noun phrase, a clause, or a quantified statement like 所有人 or 每个.
Structure
([SUBJECT]) 并不是 [STATEMENT BEING DENIED]
bìng bú shì...
How to Think About It
Think of 并 as a quiet shoulder shove against an assumption. Plain 不是 just says 'it is not'; 并不是 says 'people might assume this, but no.' That implied counter-expectation is the whole point of the 并 — drop the 并 and the corrective tone disappears. Use it when there's a real or imagined claim in the air that you're disagreeing with, especially with quantifiers like 所有, 每个, 都, where the speaker pushes back against an overgeneralization.
Examples
并不是所有人都喜欢咖啡。
Bìng bú shì suǒyǒu rén dōu xǐhuan kāfēi.
It's not the case that everyone likes coffee.
他并不是不想来，只是太忙了。
Tā bìng bú shì bù xiǎng lái, zhǐshì tài máng le.
It's not that he doesn't want to come; he's just too busy.
学中文并不是一件容易的事。
Xué Zhōngwén bìng bú shì yí jiàn róngyì de shì.
Learning Chinese is not really an easy thing.
Common Mistake
Learners use 并不是 in plain factual negation where there's no implied expectation to correct ('I'm not a student'). With nothing to push back against, 并 sounds defensive and odd; use simple 不是 instead.
我并不是学生，我是老师。
我不是学生，我是老师。
Don't Confuse With
不是...
Use plain 不是 for neutral factual negation. 并不是 only fits when you're correcting an assumption or pushing back against an expected reading.
并非...
Same emphatic negation, more literary. Use 并非 in formal writing and essays; 并不是 is the spoken and journalistic default.
不是...而是...
Use this when you want to deny one thing AND offer the correct alternative ('not X but Y'). 并不是 leaves the correction implicit.
Practice
Fill in the blank: 这 ___ 是真的，只是大家这么说。
Show answer
并不
Fill in the blank: 并不是每个人 ___ 同意这个看法。
Show answer
都
Arrange: 并不是 / 我 / 喜欢 / 这部 / 电影
Show answer
我并不是喜欢这部电影。
Translate: It's not that the problem is difficult; we just need more time.
Show answer
并不是问题很难，只是我们需要更多时间。
Push back on a common assumption using 并不是.
Show answer
并不是所有的中国人都吃辣。