Difference between だの and など/とか I'm reading an old book ( by ) and there's an unfamiliar grammatical phrasing that has fallen out of fashion and/or that he was rather fond of: ~~, e.g.: **** **** The dictionary I use suggests it's similar to / in meaning&usage. Are there any important differences?

There indeed exists a fairly important difference between and the other juxtaposition structures such as , etc.

The difference is that would generally imply the speaker's negative feelings about the items being juxtaposed all by itself **_even without using further negative words around it_**.

The other forms of juxtaposition do not carry either a positive or negative connotation all by themselves. That value judgement would need to be expressed with other wordings around them.

**To put it in the simplest terms possible, you are complaining about something 95% of the time you use .**

By "negative feelings" in this case, I am referring to juxtaposing:

1) worthless items or statements by the speaker's judgement (I did not mention juxtaposing statements above but it is a feature of the form.)

2) unrealistic and/or unsubstantial items by the speaker's judgement

In OP's example, the part of alone already expresses the speaker's negative feeling, IMHO.