“And/or” — just plain dumb?

Over at Writing Matters, Leslie O’Flahavan cites five on-line style guides to support the proposition that “using ‘and/or’ in a sentence is just plain dumb.”

p.s. Oops. I meant to post this on my other blog.

Comments

[peter]

But Ray, what about the comment to that post? Aren't there times when and/or is what the writer genuinely means? I've never liked the construction, but I've never been able to accept with certainty that readers will implicitly apply the typical interrogatory instruction to construe "or" to mean "and" or "or."