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Sun 11 Feb, 2018 12:10 pm
This made me laugh today.
In Maine law there is a list of tasks in the agricultural industry that are exempt from overtime pay. It is listed as
Quote:
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.
So dairy drivers argued that they were involved in the "distribution" of perishable foods rather then from the "packing for shipment or distribution" of perishable food. Since what they were doing had nothing to do with "packing", the law didn't apply to them.
Without the oxford comma, this law is ambiguous. They got $5 million dollars.
The Maine legislature has fixed the ambiguous grammar problem.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/09/us/dairy-drivers-oxford-comma-case-settlement-trnd/index.html
This seems good to me.
While I tend to not use the Oxford comma, I have used commas elsewhere, and to the pont of being criticized. Usually criticism comes from those who believe commas of all types should be eliminated, saying often that, they are, superfluous. There was even a high school English teacher of mine who'd instruct us not to use them so much.
Long live the comma! Hooray for Oxford commas and their victory!
"Puncuation, in short, gives us the human voice and all the meanings that lie between words"
- Pico Iyer
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