The phrase "the basic difference between" is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it to describe the primary difference between two comparable things. For example, "The basic difference between an alligator and a crocodile is the shape of their snouts."
The basic difference between the two primary races remains.
"We're familiar with the program of the two candidates...," he said, noting the basic difference between Clinton-Gore and Bush.
Above all, though, it seemed that Phelps was signaling the basic difference between his world and mine, between swimming and talking about it.
There are almost no people in the pictures, perhaps because, as John Szarkowski writes severely, we must not "obscure the basic difference between parks and playgrounds".
A STAND-UP comedian -- Rita Rudner, I think it was -- once described the basic difference between men and women in their attitudes toward shelter.
The basic difference between versions is not so much in Linux itself but in the extras you get with the distribution you select.
In the 1960s, the US military seemed to have failed to understand the basic difference between friend and enemy in a conflict that took on a dynamic of its own and lacked any strategy at all until 1970.
While Mr. Murray's analogy may be stretched a bit, it illustrates the basic difference between tankless water heaters and those cylindrical gas or electric hot water heating and storage tanks in many homes.
Other Information on the Web: Howstuffworks.com: "Can you explain the basic difference between analog and digital technology?" (//www.howstuffworks.com/question7.htm) provides a very kid-friendly answer to this complicated question.
Donald F. Kettl, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said the basic difference between the presidential candidates was in "the way they would use the marketplace to solve public problems".
The basic difference between the CID and the CCD is in the way the electric charge is transferred before it is recorded; however, the two devices may be used interchangeably as far as astronomical work is concerned.
