An Oxford comma changed this court case completely
(my favourite book on this subject: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: Why, Commas Really Do Make a Difference! by Lynne Truss)
An Oxford comma changed this court case completely
(What is an Oxford comma?
Also known as a serial comma, an Oxford comma is the comma between the penultimate and final items in a written list. Here it is, using a classic example from The Gloss: We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin.
The comma between JFK and Stalin is the Oxford comma. )
(CNN)If you have ever doubted the importance of the humble Oxford comma, let this supremely persnickety Maine labor dispute set you straight. A group of dairy drivers argued that they deserved overtime pay for certain tasks they had completed. The company said they did not. An appeals court sided with the drivers, saying that the guidelines themselves were made too ambiguous by, you guessed it, a lack of an Oxford comma.
This is what the law says about activities that do NOT merit overtime pay. Pay attention to the first sentence:
The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:
(1) Agricultural produce;
(2) Meat and fish products; and
(3) Perishable foods.
That's a lot of things! But if we're getting picky, is packing for shipment its own activity, or does it only apply to the rest of that clause, i.e. the distribution of agricultural produce, etc.?
See, all of this could be solved if there were an Oxford comma, clearly separating "packing for shipment" and "distribution" as separate things! According to court documents, the drivers distribute perishable food, but they don't pack it. Yes, this is the real argument they made. And they really won. "Specifically, if that [list of exemptions] used a serial comma to mark off the last of the activities that it lists, then the exemption would clearly encompass an activity that the drivers perform," the circuit judge wrote.
It did not, and since the judge observed that labor laws, when ambiguous, are designed to benefit the laborers, the case was settled. "For want of a comma, we have this case," the judge wrote.
The irony in this ruling is, there are actual state guidelines on how Maine lawmakers draw up their documents. And they do NOT include Oxford commas! The humanity! To be fair, there is also guidance on how to avoid unclear language that could, say, help an impressively pedantic group of drivers get what they were owed.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/15/health/oxford-comma-maine-court-case-trnd/
and another case where that comma mattered-- a LOT:
Million Dollar Comma
Rumor: A misplaced comma once deprived the U.S. government of $1 million in revenue. TRUE
Origins: In these days of e-mail, Twitter posts, and cell phone text messages, the application of proper punctuation is sometimes viewed as a dying art. Yet as archaic as that practice may sometimes seem, it remains true that in more formal written communications the addition, deletion, or movement of as little as one punctuation mark can change meanings radically and even sometimes expensively.
While some tales about errant commas are naught but invention (such as the yarn about the reply to a jewelry-seeking wifes inquiry in which the meaning of the response was altered from the negative to the affirmative by the removal of one), it is true that a memorable punctuation error once deprived the U.S. government of an estimated $1 million in revenues.
Contained in the U.S. tariff act of 6 June 1872 was a line intended to exempt from tariffs the importation of semi-tropical and tropical fruit plants. However, a transcription mistake changed the wording of the act so as to shift to the free list imports of tropical and semi-tropical fruit rather than those sorts of fruit plants.
The directive was meant to exempt Fruit plants, tropical and semi-tropical for the purpose of propagation or cultivation. Its one comma, however, was mysteriously migrated one word to the left during the copying process, thereby rendering the sentence as: Fruit, plants tropical and semi-tropical for the purpose of propagation or cultivation.
http://www.snopes.com/legal/comma.asp
Pacifist Patriot
(24,647 posts)I was just in a friendly "argument" with my PR guy over this.
niyad
(112,424 posts)Pacifist Patriot
(24,647 posts)But since I'm his client, I'm guessing I win the point no matter what.
niyad
(112,424 posts)eppur_se_muova
(36,227 posts)Illustrates the need for the Oxford comma.
niyad
(112,424 posts)Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)In the example you cite, the writer and the reader are better off if the writer always uses the Oxford comma.
But consider this counterexample, from the Wikipedia article on the subject:
To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God
the serial comma after Ayn Rand creates ambiguity about the writer's mother because it uses punctuation identical to that used for an appositive phrase, leaving it unclear whether this is a list of three entities (1, my mother; 2, Ayn Rand; and 3, God) or of only two entities (1, my mother, who is Ayn Rand; and 2, God).
In my own writing career I've gone back and forth. For years I didn't use it, but now I'm using it again. The choice is certainly not as important as insisting on two blank spaces, rather than just one, after a sentence.