RE: and/or?

["Al Geist" <al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com>]

Mark Levinson wrote:

>Take, for example, "The alleycat had suffered 
from disease and/or malnourishment."  I think
it's a clear sentence...<

It's not clear at all. Did the alley cat suffer from disease and
malnourishment, or did the alley cat suffer from disease or malnourishment?
That is the ambiguity resulting from the "and/or" construction. As for
dictionaries defining it...that does not mean it's good sentence
construction, and that is what we are talking about.

Incidentally, I checked your sources and did not find a definition for
and/or. They all returned the definition for "and" each time I looked.

Al Geist
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