Which form is correct?
None of A,B or C divides X
or
None of A,B and C divides X
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2I'd say they're both "acceptable", but personally I'd prefer or rather than and. Note that some people will be happy with Neither A nor B nor C works, but others will reject this on the grounds that neither/either only work with two alternatives.– FumbleFingersApr 13 '18 at 14:31
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Do we say: "A, B or C divides X", where A, B and C are numbers?– LambieApr 13 '18 at 14:44
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@Lambie: For smaller values of A,B,C (2, 3 and 4 [all] divide [into] 12) we wouldn't use or because it's "obvious". But it wouldn't be ridiculous to say something like 1234567, 7654321 or 292929 divides 87576465465467548765887 - with the implication that only one of the first three values divides exactly into the final one (perhaps it's a super-hard mental arithmetic test, where the addressee is being invited to guess / figure out when one that is).– FumbleFingersApr 13 '18 at 14:52
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@FumbleFingers That was not my question. My question is: Do we say in the English language that: 2,3, 4 divides 12?? Or do we usually say: 12 is divisible by 2, 3 and 4. (I was not addressing the the word or.) And none of x seems really wrong to me.– LambieApr 13 '18 at 14:54
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1I don't know. A few minutes spent thinking about this and looking around on the web have got me nowhere. I guess that to me the two alternatives in the original question both seem grammatical but a bit unnatural.– ChaimApr 13 '18 at 15:30
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Show 11 more comments
I would use:
None of A,B or C divides X.
because with some values you might be able to say:
Some of A,B or C divide X.
in which case you need or because it is not all or nothing.
Also "A,B and C" implies they exist as a fixed set, which is not known without any context.
