What do these sentences mean?

[mugs]

Originally posted by: DT4K

Originally posted by: kranky

Originally posted by: mugs
It's ambiguous, so it's really impossible to say for sure.

But my interpretation is A, because if it were B then they might as well have just said the VP can be the Treasurer. That's the only combination that is left when you eliminate the president and secretary.

But it also doesn't make much sense that the president can be the vice president.

Edit: Also, it says any two or more offices may be held by the same person, and it's impossible to have more than two if you exclude the president and the secretary.

Good logical analysis, I have to go with this interpretation.

That all makes sense, but I pointed out that there could be more offices created in the future, so it is possible that there would eventually be more combinations beyond vp and treasurer.

Since the sentences are adjacent, I'm still going to assume that it's referring only to the offices that have already been defined; if at some time other positions were added, I think it would be necessary to determine at that point whether the new position can or cannot be held concurrently with the existing positions.

Bottom line is, it's ambiguous and you should probably vote to amend the bylaws or whatever has to be done to change the wording to something more explicit.

 

[Gooberlx2]

I interpret it as option A. If it were B, I would have totally changed second sentence to something like: "With the exception of the offices of President and Secretary, which are required to be the sole positions for their incumbents, any other combination of offices may be occupied by one individual."

...yeah, something like that.

 

[Evadman]

The grammar is speaking about offices. So this is B, the president can only be the president, the secretary caa only be the secretary. All the other jobs can be held by the same person. In legal terms, it doesn't matter what we all think is the better way to word the sentence, what matter is what the sentence actually says. Hell, punctuation makes a huge difference. Check these 2 sentences.

Don?t use commas, which are not necessary.
Don?t use commas which are not necessary.

Just by adding a comma, the entire meaning changes. The first sentence says that ALL commas are not necessary, the second sentence says do not use commas when the sentence should not have a comma. Heres one that AT'ers will find more interesting.

Extra marital sex: What people have in a happy marriage.
Extra-marital sex: Reason for a divorce.