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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" ]

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  • You might consider asking this on the Law site as well. Commented Oct 8, 2016 at 19:55
  • Thanks for the comment, I will ask my question in that site as well
    – Antonio O.
    Commented Oct 9, 2016 at 13:58
  • Does the , in your apples, oranges and/or pears example signify an and or an or?
    – Igbanam
    Commented Oct 10, 2016 at 16:10

1 Answer 1

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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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