The $5-million comma
“Most of the occasions for the troubles of the world are grammatical.” — Montaigne
EASY NOW, Michel, that might be stretching it. I don’t think we can pin the invasion of Ukraine on a rogue apostrophe, or the conflagration in the Middle East on a missing serial comma. I do agree, though, that grammatical errors lead to plenty more confusion and misunderstanding than most people realize. Lots of it’s inconsequential, but some is definitely not. Badly written laws and poorly worded contracts keep lawyers in clover. Sloppy writing has caused substantial losses of reputation, money, even liberty. That’s why it pays to BE IMPECCABLE.
Take the delivery drivers who won a settlement for unpaid overtime thanks to the lack of an Oxford comma in a Maine labour law. (An Oxford, or serial, comma is the second one in this list: “lemons, limes, and oranges.” I always use it after the next-to-last item, though many style guides advise against doing so.)
The Maine law in question exempted certain tasks from qualifying for overtime compensation. The exempted tasks included:
The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of agricultural produce; meat and fish products; and perishable foods.
Without a serial comma after “shipment,” the phrase “packing for shipment or distribution” could be interpreted as describing either a single act or two separate acts (“packing for shipment” and “distribution of agricultural produce”). Since the drivers didn’t do any packing (for either shipment or distribution of produce), their lawyer argued that they should not have been denied overtime pay.
The judge agreed. He wrote: “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 do perform”—that is, distribution.
Had an alert copy editor vetted the legislation, the employers wouldn’t have been on the hook for the $5-million the drivers settled for. (The law was subsequently clarified by adding semi-colons and turning a noun into a gerund: The canning; processing; preserving; freezing; drying; marketing; storing; packing for shipment; or distributing of agricultural produce.” Too late for the Maine employers and their millions.
CAN “AND” MEAN “OR”?
IN CALIFORNIA, a prisoner’s fate was recently contested thanks to an unclear provision in the First Step Act. The provision allows some nonviolent drug offenders to avoid the mandatory minimum sentence, depending on the specifics of their criminal history.
The statute says that certain offenders can avoid the mandatory minimum if they don’t have more than four criminal history points, a prior three-point offense, and a prior two-point violent offense.
Was that wording intended to mean that someone must get the mandatory minimum if any of those three conditions applies? Or can convicts avoid a harsher sentence as long as they don’t satisfy all three?
The case was brought by an offender convicted of distributing meth. His legal team argued that he satisfied only two of the three requirements (he had no prior two-point violent offense) and therefore should be exempt from the 15-year mandatory minimum he was facing.
Just a minute, said the Justice Department. Having any of the prior offenses meant that the offender must face the mandatory minimum. Surely it was “common sense” that exempting someone with numerous three-point offenses, just because he had no prior two-point offense, would be “arbitrary enough to be implausible.”
Lawyers racked up billable hours and the court system wasted time and money adjudicating an issue easily avoided if only a copy editor had pointed out a simple fix when the law was drafted. The conditions should have read “more than four criminal history points; or a prior three-point offense; or a prior two-point violent offense.”
THERE’S LESS at stake in the sloppy online content that bedevils us every day. Still, grammatical errors often lead to misinterpretation. (So, too, can the lack of a serial comma: “I’d like to thank my parents, Jamie Lee Curtis and Brad Pitt.”) Misspellings and errors of grammar are the price of haste, fair enough, but how does a ghastly sentence like this ever make its way into pixels or print:
“All members of the family were shot by terrorists who entered Israel last Saturday after returning from a family vacation.”
The internet taught us that immediate beats accurate. Then social media ushered in the age of self-proclaimed expertise and personal branding. “Fake it till you make it” is an instruction that has never been more widely on display. Like every business genius, online healer, life coach, two-bit philosopher, and fitness guru, you are now your own head of sales and marketing, PR person, and number-one cheerleader. As am I.
Your personal brand is the accumulation of everything you write and post and do. You’re constantly locating yourself on the continua between intellectually stodgy and mentally agile, concise and long-winded, sloppy and meticulous. For that reason, BE IMPECCABLE is more than an instruction to be fastidious in your writing. It goes beyond the rules and details that govern grammar and meaning. It’s an approach that will improve your communication and strengthen your brand, certainly, but it’s also not a bad rule for nearly every aspect of your life. Whatever you do, do it carefully and well.
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