Don't take the shortcut: "and/or"
When you write whatever it is you write, there will be times that you are tempted to use both and and or at the same time. The usual result of that temptation is and/or, a miserable little textual pushme-pullyu that isn’t able to make up its minds about what it actually is. So don’t use it.
Sentences with and/or don’t flow, don’t sound conversational, and are prone to ambiguity. Sir Ernest Gowers (author of The Complete Plain Words) put it like this:
It is always ugly, usually unnecessary and sometimes downright wrong. It is also discourteous, because it nearly always forces readers to read the sentence twice, which they would not have had to do if the writer had taken a little more trouble.
So when you find you’ve written something like "I like to have donuts and/or turnovers with my coffee," rewrite to spell out the alternatives clearly, like "I like to have donuts or turnovers or both with my coffee." It’s a bit more work for you, but it saves effort for your reader.
(And maybe you should cut back on the pastries, too.)
Roy Jacobsen
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