How to replace "and/or" in sentences with multiple terms?
When writing a legal document, what is the proper way to replace and/or in a list with more than two terms to remove ambiguity?
For example, if I just have two terms:
deliver apples and/or oranges
could be replaced with:
deliver apples, oranges or both
so the valid results are:
[ "apples", "oranges", "apples and oranges"]
Now, I would like to do the same for the following sentence:
deliver apples, oranges and/or pears
So the valid results are:
[ "apples", "oranges", "pears", "apples and oranges", "apples and pears", "oranges and pears", "apples, oranges and pears" ]
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/24873. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
From a purely stylistic point of view: "any combination of: apples, oranges, pears"
But you say this is for a legal document and lawyers may construe ambiguity where ordinary reasonable people would not, so if your question is a "will it hold up in court" kind of question, this is the wrong place to ask.
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