Re: and/or?

Subject: Re: and/or?
From: "Mark L. Levinson" <nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il>
To: Raj Machhan <raj -dot- machhan -at- gmail -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 00:23:26 +0300

Raj Machhan wrote:
> It would be a great
> value addition to this thread if anybody could come up with a style
> guide that favors that use of "and/or".

I'm not sure any addition to this thread has value
any more, but here goes:

From _The Handbook of Good English_, by
Edward D. Johnson:

- quote -

and/or a convenient and compact device--
it isn't really a word or even a conventional
compound-- but a graceless one. It has a place
in legal, commercial, and technical writing, in
which precision and compactness are more important
than grace, but even in such writing it is often
unnecessarily used when _or_ alone would carry
the meaning. Elsewhere it should be avoided,
even though avoiding it may require several
additional words.

- end quote -

In short, as Johnson says elsewhere in the
same book, "_And/or_ can be effectively used,
but too often it merely camouflages muddy
thinking."

------------------------------------------------
Mark L. Levinson - nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il
------------------------------------------------
Mark discourses to fellow Israeli techwriters in
The Why of Style, at http://www.elephant.org.il/
------------------------------------------------
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References:
Re: and/or?: From: Julia Norquist
RE: and/or?: From: Al Geist
Re: and/or?: From: Mark L. Levinson
RE: and/or?: From: Al Geist
Re: and/or?: From: Raj Machhan

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