{"id":37815,"date":"2019-03-12T01:00:51","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T05:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37815"},"modified":"2019-02-12T11:13:08","modified_gmt":"2019-02-12T16:13:08","slug":"qotd-the-creed-of-the-editor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2019\/03\/12\/qotd-the-creed-of-the-editor\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The creed of the editor"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s 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\u2019s pleasure, such as, say, a learned newspaper column. Usually they do not cost anyone money or alter history.<\/p>\n<p>Colby Cosh, <a href=\"http:\/\/news.nationalpost.com\/full-comment\/colby-cosh-at-long-last-milkmen-deliver-the-punctuation-scandal-weve-been-waiting-for\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;At long last, milkmen deliver the punctuation scandal we\u2019ve been waiting for&#8221;, <em>National Post<\/em><\/a>, 2017-03-22.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,41],"tags":[529,134],"class_list":["post-37815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-quotations","tag-lawyers","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9PV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37815"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37816,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37815\/revisions\/37816"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}