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Bryan Sherman wrote:
>
>
> In English I would ask for "All employees that live in Ohio and
> Kentucky". If you used the Boolean expression 'and', to write "OH and
> KY" you would get no records. Why? The logical 'and' requires both
> expressions to be true. I always used that to impress on my students
> that when you write a query, and use and, always say "and at the same
> time".
> So, boolean logic may not be ambiguous to those familiar with it, but
> can be very ambiguous to your audience.
>
We've all had a lifetime of feedback to help us learn to get our meaning
across in person. But technical writing, for all but the most well
adjusted tech writers, has as much to do with writing ourselves out of
the text as it does writing the audience into it. That's what you're
doing when you change your spoken AND to a written OR.
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