When do you need to use "que" after "sino"?

I'm working on pero, sino, and sino que and am confused about something. 

From the information in the course and from other sites, it appears that one uses “sino QUE” when the first statement is negative and you have a conjugated verb in both statements. E.g., “Mauricio no solo es director de ventas, sino QUE tambien es programador”.  However, there are several statements in the course where QUE isn't used, e.g. “Mauricio no sólo arregló el problema, sino también optimizó el sitio para los visitantes.” Could this be because the “no” in this last sentence is part of “no sólo arregló”  is in fact part of a positive affirmation? However, the first example, “Mauricio no solo es…” is positive as well. 

In short, when MUST one use “sino que” instead of just “sino”? And when must one NOT use “que” after sino?

Thanks!

¡Hola Heather-qj9d!

Thanks very much for getting in touch with your question!

Your understanding of sino vs. sino que is correct: sino “but rather” is followed by a single word or a short phrase, while sino que “rather” is followed by a clause (i.e. a phrase with a verb). So in the sentence you've highlighted, it actually should be sino que rather than simply sino because it is followed by optimizó el sitio para los visitantes “(he) optimized the website for the visitors.” (You may hear native speakers say a sentence without the que like this when speaking casually, but to be grammatically correct, it should indeed be included.)

Our apologies for the confusion caused by this! I'll pass this on to our Spanish team so that they can look into getting it fixed. 

You mentioned that you have noticed several statements in the course like this where que isn't used; do you happen to have another example off hand? It may be that I can provide you with a helpful explanation for another instance.

Saludos,

Liss