And/or: Difference between revisions

In a {{nutshell}}, “[[and/or]]” means “[[or]]”, because “[[or]]” includes “[[and]]”.

Never use [[and/or]]. It is the lawyer’s equivalent of having a moist kipper handshake.

“[[And/or]]” crops up often in mediocre drafting. It has a face only a mother could love. It is borne of the quite unjustified fear that when contemplating a list of alternatives the occurrence of ''any'' of which leads to an certain outcome, one’s plans in that regard might somehow come unstuck if they ''all'' occur.  

There is no grounds for this fear. Logically, this is how one defines [[and]] and [[or]]:

And/or is not just ugly; it’s defeatist, because of the presence of the [[virgule]], that whoreson slash, which is not even a part of idiomatic punctuation in the English language. It’s a decoration. It has no fixed grammatical meaning. That slash admits that the plain, punctuated words of the English language have defeated you.

In fact, that slash means - and can only mean - “[[or]]”. So by saying “[[and/or]]” you are really saying “and, ''or'' or”. But to be hermetically sealed and consistent, shouldn’t you make one further clarifying step, and say “[[and]], [[and/or]] [[or]]”?