It is part of the woolly lore of editors and lawyers alike: the misplaced or absent comma in a statute or a contract that ends up costing somebody zillions of dollars. There really are not many examples of this happening, but lawyers have a responsibility to behave as though the danger were omnipresent. The thought of a comma disaster encourages close attention to detail: it provides a spur to the spirit during long hours of copy-editing.
As for print editors, believing in the myth of the expensive punctuation mark imparts a hypothetical cash value, even a heroic dignity, to the fussiness they probably acquired in toilet training.
The thing about text errors in the law is that natural language is highly redundant. You can transpose letters in a sentence or word, sow punctuation randomly, leave out the vowels: what’s left will ordinarily still convey the intended meaning. Errors induced by chance rarely create true ambiguity. Their disruptiveness is vexing when you are trying to create high art for a consumer’s pleasure, such as, say, a learned newspaper column. Usually they do not cost anyone money or alter history.
Colby Cosh, “At long last, milkmen deliver the punctuation scandal we’ve been waiting for”, National Post, 2017-03-22.
March 12, 2019
QotD: The creed of the editor
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