AND/OR OR AND OR OR OR BOTH
Sta,—You have in your columns so often exposed or derided the grosser forms of modern English usage that it is a matter for regret that your contributor Janus should have fallen, not for the first time I think, a prey to that two-headed monster " and/or."
" And/or " is the somewhat bogus offspring by Civil Servant out of Official Minute. It is bogus because in the vast majority of cases it can be shorn of one or other of its heads without any significant loss of effect, whilst in the rare cases when the genuine alternative must be clearly provided for " and/or " can be dodged by " either . . . or . . . or both " or some other device.
Had Janus said in The Spectator of January 7th, "No one alive is master of more pungent or pregnant phrases than Mr. Churchill," would any man have seriously inferred that in either but not both virtues he judged him to be supreme,?-And had Mr. Churchill in 1940 declared that the German invader would be fought " in the fields and/or the streets "
would the responsibility of the. Home Guard have thereby been made any more clear?
No, Sir, let us abolish " and/or " and/or expressions like it.—Yours
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