The phrase "a kind of substitute" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when describing something that serves as a replacement or alternative for something else.
Example: "In the absence of fresh herbs, dried herbs can be a kind of substitute in many recipes."
Alternatives: "a type of replacement" or "a form of alternative".
Ethnic nationalism provides a kind of substitute.
The writer seems to be seeking not just further details about the Clutter case but a kind of substitute family as well.
Mr. Dasgupta said this creates a big temptation for some financiers to use mobster muscle as a kind of substitute insurance.
Nor do works of art of a licentious nature usually incite people to rape or adultery; far from acting as incitements to action, they are safety valves against action by providing a kind of substitute gratification.
OF AMPLIFICATION about the mention by Geoffrey Hellman in his Oct. 30 casual about the Seligmans, of the Society for Ethical Culture as a "kind of substitute for religion".
RUSSO I totally agree — the play not only takes nothing away from the reading experience, it builds on it, but the movies present themselves as a kind of substitute.
I don't think VCs are a great market to buy any premium YouNoodle analytics, because there's going to be natural skepticism that an algorithm can be any kind of substitute for their experience and judgment.
Those of us for whom books are a faith in themselves — who find the notion that pixels, however ordered, could be any kind of substitute for the experience of reading in a chair with the strange thing spread open on our lap — will love this book.
This makes reading his fiction an experience for which reading about it can't be any kind of substitute.
We all know the modern rules: millions of people have to leave where they grew up to find even halfway dependable work; and they find that creating any kind of substitute home somewhere new is impossible.
After renaming the combined company Saks Inc., Mr. Martin introduced Saks Off Fifth, a kind of Saks substitute for the off-price crowd.
