Roy asked:

Is the word 'Exception' a contradictory term? In every example I could think of a contradiction occurs.
For example, All human beings are Americans, except those humans in England, Germany, France,
(etc.) is contradictory because the quantifier 'All' was used. Certainly humans who live outside of
America prove 'All' is the wrong term — 'Some' is the correct quantifier. I always think that a person
who chooses to use long winded words and includes 'except' is being deceptive to cause confusion or
cause a person to make a poor judgement (as a rhetorical effect.) Instead the person should use a
simple term to express a statement if possible. Legal documents are full of long-winded sentences
with the word 'except'. Should the word 'Only' be the proper term instead; for no contradiction occurs
and is more specific?

============

All humans are American except those in England, France, etc.

The logical form is going to be

"
For all x, IF x is a human THEN:

x is an American, or x is British, or x is French, or x is etc. etc.

AND it is not the case that x is both American and British, or x is both American and French,
or x is both American and etc. etc.."

Exclusion is a property of disjunction: a or b is inclusive if a and b can both be true, exclusive if only
one can be true. The above example is a example of exclusive disjunction. To make this clear then
you need the "and it is not the case that ...". An example of an inclusive disjunction would be a case
where I say 'you can have sugar or milk in your tea': Clearly, I would be lacking in etiquette if I meant
this exclusively!

Rich Woodward