We elaborate, strengthen, and generalize known representation theorems by different authors for regular operators on vector and Banach lattices. Our main result asserts, in particular, that every regular linear operator T acting from a vector lattice E with the principal projection property to a Dedekind complete vector lattice F, which is an ideal of some order continuous Banach lattice G, admits a unique representation , where is the sum of an absolutely order summable family of disjointness preserving operators and is an order narrow (= diffuse) operator. Our main contribution is waiver of the order continuity assumption on T. In proofs, we use new techniques that allow obtaining more general results for a wider class of orthogonally additive operators, which has somewhat different order structure than the linear subspace of linear operators.