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How to remove attachment ambiguity?

English Language & Usage Asked on January 4, 2021

I have the following sentence in my technical manual about naming files:

Punctuation marks other than hyphens, spaces around punctuation marks that are replaced by underscores, and spaces between initials are removed.

As you may see, there are two ways to read it:

(1) Punctuation marks other than hyphens, (2) spaces around punctuation marks that are replaced by underscores, (3) and spaces between initials are removed. (This is what I actually mean.)

Punctuation marks other than (1) hyphens, (2) spaces around punctuation marks that are replaced by underscores, (3) and spaces between initials are removed. (Wrong.)

How can I remove this ambiguity and show that only the first version is correct without using numbers?

I can replace commas with semicolons, but I don’t think it really solves the problem.

One Answer

You might want to add as well as or but also before "spaces":

Punctuation marks other than hyphens, as well as spaces around punctuation marks that are replaced by underscores, and spaces between initials are removed.

or

Punctuation marks other than hyphens, but also spaces around punctuation marks that are replaced by underscores, and spaces between initials are removed.

Correct answer by fev on January 4, 2021

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