h a l f b a k e r yOn the one hand, true. On the other hand, bollocks.
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The HB being the pedant hang-out that it is, I am sure
this
has been covered already, and has probably caused a
long
string of argumentative annotations somewhere.
However, searching for "and/or" fails because both words
are stop words. So.
The phrase "and/or" in non-technical writing
irritates
me,
because it is wrong in several ways.
First, it looks ugly.
Second, the "/" means "or" (in order to avoid writing "and
or or"), but we never use the "/" in this way in normal
prose. Shakespeare didn't write "To be/not to be."
Third, the written "/" is silent - when you read "and/or"
aloud you usually just say "and or". So what's the point in
having it there? Alternatively, you might say "and stroke
or", which is even more ridiculous comma when you think
about it period
One way out of this would be to adopt Boolean logical
conventions, wherein "or" would be replaced by "exor"
(would you like milk exor lemon in your tea?), leaving
"or"
to mean "either or both" (would you like milk or sugar in
your coffee?). However, this is clunky because the new
word, exor, would be used much more often than the
old word, or.
Another solution, recommended by many style guides, is
to
recast the sentence ("would you like milk, sugar or both
in
your coffee"), but this is long winded.
Why, then, do we not simply permit the word "andor" to
exist, for use in those situations where you want to make
it clear that either or both options can apply, and where
"and/or" is used at present?
"Andor" is not an ugly word, nor is it difficult to
pronounce.
In speech, it is how we usually pronounce "and/or"
anyway.
http://linguistics....ve-and-exclusive-or
[hippo, Jul 02 2012]
[link]
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Back in the day, it was borne in upon me that i overused the
word "therefore", so i adopted techniques to avoid it, eventually
compiling a list of other ways to express the connection. "Or"
without "either" usually carries an inclusive connotation.
However, there are other ways to approach this. One of the less
obvious ways of doing this is to select functionally complete
operators and reconstruct the disjunction so as to produce the
same truth table as inclusive or. The problem with treating the
disjunction in this way is that it is hard to reach - the sequent
constructed from nands is the second longest of all possible
truth tables. |
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Another possible approach is to look at how other languages
express it and translate loosely, or not at all. Latin has "aut" and
"vel", whose second expresses the inclusive or. German has
"bzw." - bezüglichsweise - to put it across. |
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There's also the so-called Färbung, which distinguishes "but" and
"and", and "however" and "also". This was Freges rather
inadequate attempt at accounting for the meaning of
conjunctions without having to abandon the idea of truth tables. |
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Now, for fun, believe it or not, i once compiled two lists of
constructions to replace "therefore" (which is sort of a fancy
"then") and "and", wherewith i peppered my prose. The same
could be done for andor, and in fact now will. Moreover, there
could be variations of Färbung for andor for all i know, but i
have yet to consider that. The difference would presumably be
whether the disjunction was expected or not. |
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OK, my bad - misremembered this. It's "beziehungsweise" and
could be translated as "respectively", "also known as", "rather"
(which sounds exclusive to me) and "more precisely", which is to
andor as "but" is to "and" i think. Rather disappointingly, it can
also mean "also". |
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Seems useful; given the Tweet-style dreck now embodied in the OED, this can at least justify its existence. |
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//Back in the day// knew it was you in 4! :) |
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[nineteenthly] I agree, "either" does modify "or" to
imply "exor". However, "andor" to imply "or, not
and" is a little more compact. Regarding other
languages that seem to handle this better, I do feel
that English ingenuity should be able to devise a
word of our own. Given the state of the economy, I
am reluctant to rely too heavily on foreign imports. |
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//what rhymes with orand// four and? As in "four
and twenty blackbirds"? |
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I think that the inclusion of 'either' confers exclusivity on the 'or', and in its absence it must be assumed to be inclusive. So no additional words are necessary.
If we're making up words, I'd rather have a gender-ambivalent term for one person. |
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//So no additional words are necessary.// |
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And yet sees "and/or" written quite frequently. I
agree, in most cases a simple "or" will suffice. But
for those who currently feel the need to use
"and/or", "andor" would be a more elegant
alternative. |
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// I'd rather have a gender-ambivalent term for one
person.// How about "one person"? |
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//would you like milk exor lemon in your tea?// has to be [marked-for-tagline] |
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//one person// ... one perSON... see the opression inherent in the system &c. &c. |
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//If we're making up words, I'd rather have a gender-ambivalent term for one person// How about “they”? e.g. “I hear a person moving around downstairs, they were making a strange scraping noise”. The advantage is that this form is already in fairly common use. The disadvantage is that it drives the pedants mad. Both of which constitute good reasons to deliberately use it I think. |
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The trouble is that inclusivity has to be agreed generally for "or"
to work as "andor", and it tends not to. I think there should be
some kind of coinage programme for all possible bivalent truth
tables for functions with one or two inputs, and perhaps also a
second set to express unexpectedness. Another thing is that
connectives can sometimes sneak out and turn into other bits of
languages. For instance "is different than" has the same truth
table as exclusive or. Therefore, maybe there's a piece of lurking
language which is already doing that job. |
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"Four and twenty" works in near-RP but not in Scottish English
(as was, at least) or SE English with its etymologically correct
"fower", a disyllable. |
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// inclusivity has to be agreed generally for "or" to
work as "andor"// |
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I'm not sure I follow. I'm just advocating that
"andor" be used to replace "and/or", wherever the
latter is currently used. "Or" will maintain its
current usage - if used in an "either...or" phrase, it
will be interpreted as exor; if used simply in "A or
B", it will be up to the reader to interpret it as
"exor" or "and/or" (as is the case at present). But
where clarity is needed and "and/or" is meant,
"andor" can be used. |
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For example:
"To be or not to be" (open to interpretation, but
clearly either...or).
"Milk or sugar?" (open to interpretation, but
clearly allowing for both)
"You can add either milk or lemon" (clearly
exor)
"Porridge is made from crushed oats cooked in
milk andor water." (explicitly stating that a
combination may be used) |
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Oh bugger. I said I'm advocating, which means I've
Mornington Crescented myself. |
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I was typing at [Loris], [MB], not disagreeing with you. After
some thought, I've arrived at "at least one of" as a possible
equivalent. On the matter of negation, it turns out that a few
languages negate by turning a statement into a question because
it's more polite than contradiction - when one contradicts, it
could be seen as accusing someone of being a liar. Thus what
could be done is to introduce an extra-polite set of conjunctions
by turning negations into rhetorical questions. Find a way of
saying something which is only true when both component
propositions are false, make it a polite rhetorical yes/no question
and you will have your andor in another form. That would be
"Neither P nor Q?". |
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I will now go away, draw a big table, work out sixteen phrases,
add another sixteen phrases for surprising conjunctions and
finally, will i add neither sixteen nor thirty-two rhetorical
question-based conjunctions? Will this neither see the light of
day on the HB nor a blog? We shall see. |
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Ah. I see. However, do not forget to make
allowances for possibilities such as "milk, lemon or
sugar?" |
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It gets more complicated then. However, i have a result: andor
is equivalent to "unless" with two arguments! All you need is
"unless" with three or more arguments, like a list separated by
commas with "unless" instead of "and" at the end, and you have
your synonym for andor. This depends on the rather
controversial acceptance of material implication, but provided
you can swallow that, it will work. Trust me on this. |
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[nineteenthly], I can think of no-one better to
trust with this matter. Which raises another
issue: if no-one can be trusted, does that mean
that two or more can be trusted? This too needs
clarifying. |
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On a tangential note, there is a sentence which
contains no fewer than five consecutive "and"s: a
landlord of a pub is arguing with the signwriter at
work outside, and says "There needs to be more
space between 'Pig' and 'and' and 'and' and
"Whistle"." |
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One could likewise ask "Should it be 'and or or' or
'or or and'?" |
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
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Andor (Wheel of Time), country set in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time novels
Andor Technology, manufacturer of scientific digital cameras
And/or, logical conjunction
Andorian, Star Trek fictional race inhabiting Andoria (also called Andor)
Númenor (or Andor), a fictional place in J. R. R. Tolkien's writings
Waldo Zeptic, the Ambassador from Andor, in The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers |
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Imagine our disappointment when we discovered that this had only the briefest of references to Boolean operators. |
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The "/" operator (when not used as a file path infix) denotes Arithmetic Division. |
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In C and its descendants, there are clear discriminations between the Arithmetic and Logical operators, "&" indicating the Arithmetic "AND" function and "|" indicating the "OR" function. |
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Likewise, the Logical functions are denoted by "&&" and "||". |
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In either case the operator combination "&|" would be rejected by a compiler as nonsensical. |
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We suggest that the use of "and/or" in text could be neatly replaced by "&|", pronounced "ampersand pipe". |
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[ of ], my understanding of this discussion is that it's dominated
by Boolean algebra! On that matter, the exclamation mark is not
intended to negate the first sentence of this annotation in an
RPN sort of way. |
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On that subject, what i'm surprised to discover seems to be
"unless" can be represented by "v". Apparently, the reason for
the inclusion of the backslash in ASCII was so that "/\" and "\/"
could be typed in ALGOL. |
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It might make sense to trust two when no-one can be trusted
because contradictions in their testimony might enable one to
reach the truth, so that's absolutely fine. |
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It also occurred to me that the antonym of "unless" ought to be
"less" and therefore that there's a case for replacing the
connective whose truth table is false unless neither are true with
that. In other words, less is nor. |
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Doesn't and/or really mean any? Whats the difference in
saying "I want cookies and/or milk" than," "I want any
cookies and milk.". Simply provide any cookies and milk to
me you can't go wrong. |
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It can have different equivalents in different parts of
speech if you like. For instance, the adverbial
equivalent of "and" is "also", and "but"'s equivalent is
"however" there. "Any" is probably the adjectival
version of "unless", if you see what i mean. In fact,
on reflection "unless" is probably to "but" as "and" is
to "andor" - it's asymmetrical as to expectation. |
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//the use of "and/or" in text could be neatly
replaced by "&|", pronounced "ampersand pipe".// |
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Thereby combining typographical uglitude with an
increase in spoken syllables... |
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Indeed - the EU "Ampersand - Pipe" directive will be along any day now ... |
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Treating those characters as they are normally used in formal
logic as opposed to programming, "&" and "|" are
complementary - "&" is of course AND and "|" is NAND. Putting
the two together fails to refer to truth-values entirely, if
anything. If it's taken to mean the conjunction of AND and
NAND, all its truth-values are false. If it's their disjunction, all its
truth-values are true. If it's a composite symbol of some kind
representing a logical connective, to my eye, used as i am to
formal logic as printed and written by pen or chalk in the
twentieth century, and in fact also on the screen of a VT220
come to think of it, but in a declarative rather than an
imperative context, it looks like it means absolutely nothing. I
imagine if you're used to something like C or related notation,
it's inside your comfort zone. |
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If we eliminate "or" and instead use "not and", will that work? |
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hmm... you realize there's two different types of "andor" as well.... |
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Whole
Cake & Ice Cream | Cake | Ice Cream | nothing. |
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Natural
Cake & Ice Cream | Cake | Ice Cream. |
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I think you're all forgetting Andorra and its 100,000
inhabitants. |
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It's all wired with Cat A LAN, apparently. |
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I'm in favour of pinching a word from another language - it is, after all, the traditional thing for the English Language to do when it runs out of words to convey concepts. From the linked discussion, I'd like to propose the Basque words "ala" (exclusive or) and "edo" (inclusive or), as Basque is poorly represented in English at the moment. Interestingly, Finnish seems to have three words for "or": "tai" (inclusive), "vai" (exclusive), and "eli" (equivalence - "It's a shop, or where people go to buy stuff"). |
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//Cake & Ice Cream | Cake | Ice Cream | nothing// Come on, you know that is both humanly and physically impossible. |
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Yes, the English language is impoverished in this way but one
only need go to Latin to find distinctive conjunctions of this kind,
which were traditionally used in formal logic for this purpose
and have contributed the V symbol - "vel". |
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I think of Nand as "is incompatible with". "Not both..and..." is
probably the most straightforward form. |
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// you're used to something like C or related notation, it's inside your comfort zone. // |
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Who would want to be anywhere else ? |
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// How about "one person"?// |
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Ah. I think that will work nicely. |
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When writing a letter:
~ Dear one person Leslie Ambiguous-Firstname,
... |
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On the phone:
~ Hi I'm trying to speak to Tracy, is that person available? |
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The best and simplest method of dealing with this would be to construct an array denoting each bitwise operation in sequence and then referencing its index. So for example, let's take two subjects, a and b, and construct a matrix such that r is the result:
abf i = the truth-table(a,b,r)
-------------
0 (0,0,0)
1 (0,0,1)
2 (0,1,0)
3 (0,1,1)
4 (1,0,0)
5 (1,0,1)
6 (1,1,0)
7 (1,1,1)
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This way, if I want to refer to milk abf(3,5,7) sugar. It becomes expressly clear that I'm happly to supply one, the other, or both. |
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Wider functions could be defined for arrangements of more than two subjects, but would be confined to usage by only the most pedantic. |
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Why does your two-bit truth-table have eight entries, zen_tom? |
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It looks to me like a three-bit table. Were you considering the tea as well? |
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The question "Would you like tea with milk or sugar?" provides five options: {tea alone, tea with milk, tea with sugar, tea with milk and sugar, no tea}.
The alternative way to interpret what you say is along the lines of Mrs Doyle - whether tea will be drunk is not in doubt. You must have tea. You must also have one or both of milk and sugar. |
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Oh, and I think orand is better than andor. |
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It's a three-bit table because having a separate word for NOT confuses matters, and I don't want to get bogged down in any confusing negative/double negative territory, so the final bit there shows you the result expected from the combination of the preceding two bits. (Plus it makes the tacit assumption of a Non-Doylian Universe) |
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This allows you to answer the question "Would you like tea or coffee?" with the answer, "abf(0)" which would mean not only that you didn't NOT want either tea, coffee, but that nor would you not like both a cup of tea and coffee at the same time. That isn't of course not perfectly simple nor consise. |
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Vernacular usage would normally be limited to one of the odd-numbered indexes. |
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[z_t], i came up with a conlang which worked a bit
like that once. Each proposition was a four-letter
monosyllable like "tosk" which varied according to
its truth table, and i arranged the alternatives so
that each combination was easily pronounced. |
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The thing about "orand" is that it's on the brink of
being a rhyme for "orange", but if it were to be
the actual word "orange" it wouldn't be any more,
so how about three conjunctions plugging gaps:
"sporange", "spurple" and "chilver"? Three words
then end up with rhymes into the bargain that
way. |
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"sporange" and "chilver" are real words, but
"spurple"? You could have "hurple" or "curple". |
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Pooh always liked a little something at eleven
o'clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see
Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when
Rabbit said, "Honey or condensed milk with your
bread?" he was so excited that he said, "Both," and
then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, "But don't
bother about the bread, please." |
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Hurple is fine by me but your assertion that sporange is real I
find startling. Is it just not pronounced like "orange"? |
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Edit: sporangium! How could I not have known about that? |
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As long as we're discussing tea, milk and/or sugar, let's not forgot the Oreo. |
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