Re: Using the conjunction OR in mutually exclusive options

[Donna McManus <donna -dot- mcmanus -at- gmail -dot- com>]

As far as I know, it's an acceptable usage in American English. It seems
using either would be a matter of style or personal preference, but it
implies only two available valid choices. In the situation that prompted my
question, there is a possibility that there could be three valid but
mutually exclusive choices--I avoided using specific examples because they
came from legacy documents that likely wouldn't be easily understood.. My
example didn't reflect that possibility.




On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 5:55 AM, Chris Gooch <chris -dot- gooch -at- rocketmail -dot- com>wrote:

>
> Why not just add the word 'either' - seems to be a perfectly good way of
> flagging an exclusive-or (aka, either-or) in English prose without needing
> to use XOR...
> +++To open a menu, either:
> - Press Alt+the key for the underlined letter in the menu name
>     -or-
> - Use the LEFT ARROW key or the RIGHT ARROW key to move to another menu+++
> In situations where the two options really are antagonistic so you must
> choose one or the other and stick to it, just spell that out too.
> At least, in British English that works fine.. if either-or isn't in common
> usage stateside let me know ;-)
> Chris.
> Christopher Gooch.Software Developer and Technical Writer,Sheffield, UK.
> http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/christopher-gooch/17/865/97a
>
>
>
>
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