'Or' in Place of 'And'

 

Here's a weird issue that's coming up a lot in my copy editing lately: or in place of and. Here's an example:

Visitors can choose from an array of activities including hiking, biking or snorkeling. 

If find this pretty interesting. The or clearly speaks to the logic of the sentence. You can choose X, Y or Z.  But it's not quite the same. In the structure of our example sentence, options include all three activities. That is, the options include X, Y and Z.

Just one more reason to keep your thinking cap on when you're editing!

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