Comma crimes and catastrophes

The Greek classical scholar, Aristophanes of Byzantium, is hailed as the patient father of punctuation for his pioneering efforts to sort out the complex comprehension and proper pronunciation of his native language 2200 years ago. Written in dense “scriptura continua” the tedious texts then proved notoriously difficult to read, without any obvious word separation we take for granted today.

At 60, appointed to head the legendary Library of Alexandria one of the world’s famous ancient wonders in Egypt, the visionary critic and editor created a unique system of dots or “punctus” at different heights, termed théseis, indicating varying pauses and minor oral breaks in the precious scrolls, hundreds of thousands of which, were stored in the repository.

“For as long as anyone could remember, the Greeks had written their texts so that their letters ran together ‘withnospacesorpunctuation’ and without any distinction between lowercase and capitals. It was up to the reader to pick their way through this unforgiving mass of letters to discover where each word or sentence ended and the next began,” observed Keith Houston, author of “Shady Characters, The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks.”

Grammar would develop long after Aristophanes, but modern marks evolved even later from his early dots that separated verses. For a short piece smaller than a clause called a “komma” there was the midlevel point or stigme mese. Punctuation would differ widely among the incunabula, the 40,000 or so books printed before 1501, and instead a slash or virgule (/) divided narratives. Over the centuries, the virgule shortened, slumped, and gained a characteristic curve - the stigme mese had eventually emerged as the current comma.

The hypostigme dot placed level with the bottom of the script signalled an even greater halt, similar to a colon or semicolon, for delivering a lengthier passage or a kolon, as the audience took in the meaning of the preceding line.

Finally, for an extended breather or periodos meaning the way or path around, came the stigme teleia or final dot, originally even with the tops of the letters, hence the revised version of the full stop or period. Deemed a philologist for his literal love of learning, the cultured Aristophanes, an outstanding Homeric expert studied speech and literature. Philology originates from the Greek terms for love and word or reason.

Last week, a contemporary cognoscente, American Circuit Judge, David Barron wrote: “For want of a comma, we have this case,” referring to an unusual lawsuit in which the Federal Appeals Court allowed drivers for a Portland dairy, to go forward with their dispute over more than US$10M in overtime pay, with good reason.

At the centre of the issue is the optional Oxford comma so named for the top learning institution, where it was traditionally used by printers, readers, and editors of the University Press, before a closing conjunction at the end of a list or series of words.

The latest legal matter concerns Maine’s overtime law, which does not apply to 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.”

There is no Oxford or serial comma after “shipment,” so the phrase could mean that “packing for shipment or distribution” was exempted. The drivers argue the words refer to the single activity of packing which they don’t do, while the defendant, Oakhurst Dairy, retorts that the line covers two different activities, packing, and distribution, and drivers fall within the exemption.

In 2014, the three truck drivers sued Oakhurst Dairy, seeking more than four years’ worth of overtime pay that they had been denied. “Does the law intend to exempt the distribution of the three categories that follow, or does it mean to exempt packing for the shipping or distribution of them? Delivery drivers distribute perishable foods, but they don’t pack the boxes themselves. Whether the drivers were subject to a law that had denied them thousands of dollars a year depended entirely on how the sentence was read,” Daniel Victor said in his New York Times (N.Y.T) article.

If there were a comma after “shipment,” it might have been clear that the law exempted the distribution of perishable foods. But the court this month sided with the appellants, decreeing the absence of a comma produced enough uncertainty to rule in their favour, reversing a lower court decision.

“That comma would have sunk our ship,” David G. Webbert, a lawyer who represented the drivers, admitted in an interview.

Judge Barron explained in a 29-page determination that since the workers maintain they are not involved in the “packing for shipment nor packing for distribution,” the District Court erred when it ruled in favour of Oakhurst Dairy. “[W]e conclude that the exemption’s scope is actually not so clear,” and he remanded the case for further review.

Popular for its dairy products with some U.S$110M in annual sales, Oakhurst sours at the thought of all the “comma-tion” over a far too “comma-n” mark. Upset about being milked for millions, it is refusing to be creamed and intends to keep fighting the suit, even as initial enthusiasm at the earlier Court pronouncement has long evaporated.

“Comma sense ain’t so common,” another attorney for the drivers, Jeffrey Neil Young quipped recently, the Associated Press (AP) reported. Webbert, added that the “fight for overtime rights has been vindicated” by what he called the “landmark” ruling made possible by an ambiguous exemption and a lack of a punctuation mark. “Our argument was that it was a train wreck of a sentence,” Webbert asserted.

The language in the law followed Maine’s Legislative Drafting Manual, which specifically instructs lawmakers to not use the Oxford comma. It does clarify that caution should be taken if an item in the series is modified. Commas, it affirms, “are the most misused and misunderstood punctuation marks in legal drafting and, perhaps, the English language” and should be applied “thoughtfully and sparingly.”

Legal history features several instances in which a comma made all the difference, like a $1 million dispute between Canadian companies in 2006 or a U.S$2M costly insertion of a comma in an 1872 U.S tariff law that would top U.S $38.4M now.

Since the ruling, the Internet has reignited the international grammar battlefield for defence and derision of the tiny comma, AP noted. The news site Vox tweeted that the “Oxford comma is the world’s most controversial punctuation mark.” Indeed, use of the Oxford or the Harvard comma, since it is also supported by the oldest American institution of higher education, has divided friends, foes and families for years with one poll finding that more than half of those questioned preferred the extra mark. Before joining the Appeals court, Barron, the Harvard-educated and former Public Law Professor at the University, worked as a newspaper reporter.

Opinions differ passionately on whether to use the serial comma with some style guides, like that of Oxford mandating it while others like AP and the Canadian Press advise against. “There are certain places where for the sake of clarity and good form the presence of a comma is obligatory, but on the other hand a too liberal use of this form of punctuation tends to slow up the pace of the reading matter and to create confusion and hesitancy in the mind of the reader,” ruled the 1937 Times model.

Journalist and satirist, H.L. Mencken declared, “The English are rather more careful than we are, and commonly put a comma after the next-to-last member of a series, but otherwise are not too precise to offend a red-blooded American.”

Firing the best shots in the comma clamour of the 1930s, were the writer, celebrated wit, James Thurber and the founding editor of the New Yorker, Harold Ross, a staunch defender of the serial comma. Upset about Ross’ amendment of a description of the Stars and Stripes from “the red white and blue” to “the red, white, and blue” Thurber lamented, “All those commas make the flag seem rained on. They give it a furled look. Leave them out, and Old Glory is flung to the breeze, as it should be.” Impressed, Ross replied, “write a piece about it, and I’ll punctuate the flag any way you want it…”

Facing 60, Thurber would joke, “I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.” As he insisted, “Don’t get it right, just get it written.”

Guyana may soon find out whether the capital Mayor’s and Councillors’ haste to do just this and to enter into a contentious contract, is legally binding as written, following the Government’s decision to forcibly use its powers to immediately suspend the despised Georgetown metered parking by-laws, for an initial three months.

Communities Minister Ronald Bulkan, Tuesday announced that he had signed a new order to rapidly effect the popular move, with the police force helping to ensure that vehicles are not clamped, following weeks of protests by citizens, angry that the administration had been rather casual and careless about allowing such a lop-sided long-term pact to be implemented.

In the expected review of the catastrophe, there should be hopefully a lot more to take considered pause than conscientious checking of circumspect commas, clauses, conditions, criminal offences and court cases, if the coalition is to continue with what is correct – and right.

ID laughs at Oscar Wilde’s reported words, “I was working on the proof of one of my poems all morning and took out a comma” and “In the afternoon - well, I put it back again.”