In this article, we investigate the avoidance property of ideals and rings. Among the main results, a general version of the avoidance lemma is formulated. It is shown that every idempotent ideal (and hence every pure ideal) has avoidance. The avoidance property of arbitrary direct products of avoidance rings is characterized. It is shown that every overing of an avoidance domain is an avoidance domain. Next, we show that every avoidance N-graded ring whose base subring is a finite field is a PIR. It is also proved that the avoidance property is preserved under flat ring epimorphisms. Dually, we formulate a notion of strong avoidance, and show that it is reflected by pure morphisms.
