Consider the lowly “comma”, among the puniest of punctuation.
Just a little curvy mark down there.
Not much to look at.
So, what’s the difference between these two phrases: “Let’s eat (comma) Granny!”
and “Let’s eat Granny!”?
Yeah, it’s basically the difference between life and death.
So if you think grammar is something you only need in school, you’re about to be “flabbergasted”
(yeah, you can google that!).
So what’s the big deal with commas?
Well, in 2017, Oakhurst Dairy, a company from the state of Maine, literally lost millions
of bucks because of a misplaced comma.
The situation was rather trivial: truck drivers working for the company claimed they were
owed overtime payment, while the company itself disagreed.
Both sides appealed to the state labor laws which said anyone who worked more than 40
hours a week was entitled to 1.5 times their usual pay rate.
That is, with some exceptions, which were exactly why the argument began in the first
place.
You see, according to the law, the exemptions were the following (and it’s a direct quote):
“The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment
or distribution of: 1.
Agricultural produce; 2.
Meat and fish produce; and 3.
Perishable foods” Dairy products are absolutely considered perishable
foods.
Okay, that means truck drivers are exempt from the overtime pay, doesn’t it, since
they distribute such foods?
Well, it’s not that simple.
Take a closer look at the first sentence.
It says “…storing, packing for shipment or distribution.”
Notice the comma before “or”?
Right, you don’t, because it’s not there.
And that means it’s all a single clause!
Now this requires a little bit of explanation.
The “Oxford comma” is normally put before “and” or “or” in sentences where there
are three or more items listed one after another.
And trust me, it can make a huge difference!
Let’s take a simple (albeit oh-so-awkward) example:
During my travels, I met Elon Musk, a witch, and a cyborg.
And now compare it with this: During my travels, I met Elon Musk, a witch and a cyborg.
Uh huh.
In the first case, the succession is easily tracked: first I met Elon Musk, then a witch,
and after that a cyborg.
Quite a motley crew, to be sure, but not too weird to be true.
In the second case, though, the lack of an Oxford comma before “and” implies that
Elon Musk is both a witch and a cyborg.
Well, given his genius I wouldn’t be too surprised if he wasn’t human, but this is
a little bit too much, don’t you agree?
That said, let’s get back to the case in question.
Like I said earlier, the “packing for shipment or distribution” part of the sentence also
lacks an Oxford comma, which makes it all a single activity.
And truck drivers hang on to this notion.
What they said was, “We distribute the goods but we don’t pack them.”
And if they don’t, that makes them not exempt from the overtime pay.
The company disagreed with this, and the case was taken to court.
And what do you think was the result?
That’s right: the drivers won!
The judge decided that, if the comma wasn’t in place, it indeed meant that packing goods
and distributing them was considered a whole, and since the drivers weren’t involved in
packing, the overtime payments were due.
Thus, according to the court’s decision, each of the five truck drivers that filed
the complaint received $50,000, and the rest of them (that’s about 127 people) were owed
overtime pay for four years.
All in all, that made for over 5 million bucks paid from Oakhurst Dairy’s pocket.
Later, Maine edited the law to avoid such ambiguity, but it was already too late for
the company.
Punctuation matters, folks!
And this isn’t the only case when a seemingly tiny mistake costs millions of dollars!
Here are just a few of many examples that grammar rules the world.
1.
Fruit and plants, 1872 One of the first times when punctuation mattered
way too much was when the US government put a comma instead of a hyphen in the US Tariff
Act.
By writing “fruit, plants” instead of “fruit-plants,” the government basically
waived fees for all plants instead of only fruit-bearing ones.
To say that farmers were elated is the understatement of the century.
Just think about it: all of a sudden, they didn’t have to pay taxes for anything they
grew on their land and sold!
It took almost two years to amend the act, and during that time, the losses were about
$2 million, which today amounts to more than $50 million.
2.
Son and sons, 2015 Not convinced yet?
Well, here’s a case where not a comma, but a single letter caused a lot of trouble.
In 2015, a British family business called Taylor and Sons was listed by the government
as facing liquidation.
Sad, of course, but a standard procedure nonetheless.
Well, it would’ve been if not for a mistake in the listings: what the government actually
meant was Taylor and Son, a different company altogether.
When they realized the mistake, though, it was already too late: a century-old company
with no financial troubles went bankrupt overnight.
That wasn’t the end of it, however, because later, Taylor and Sons took the British Government
to court and won the case, earning 9 million pounds as compensation.
And justice was served.
3.
The most expensive typo in history, 1962 This grand title goes to a small error in
the guidance system of Mariner 1, a probe made by NASA to collect data from Venus.
The typo was so tiny that it’s no real surprise no one noticed it at first.
The thing is, the algorithm lacked a hyphen.
But no matter how small, every symbol counts when precise technology is at stake.
This case was no exception: in 1962, the missing hyphen sent the rocket bearing the probe off
course and on to a dramatic crash in the Atlantic Ocean.
By today’s terms, the cost of this mistake in algorithm was about $150 million, but the
reputational damage was indefinitely larger.
NASA lost a huge amount of trust, and the world only saw pictures of Venus much later.
Ah, that public opinion.
So volatile.
4.
Exotic travels gone rogue, 1988 Yellow Pages was really useful back in the
pre-Internet era, but it seems it was equally nasty in some aspects.
In 1988, a travel agency from California decided to list its exotic travel packages in the
directory as an advertisement.
What do you think could’ve been the worst-case scenario involving a typo?
If you guessed that it was in the word “exotic,” you would be right.
Yellow Pages printed it as “erotic travels.”
Definitely not the kind I’d call for openly!
And the agency’s clientele thought the same: it lost 80% of its clients when Yellow Pages
refused to correct the mistake.
It was, perhaps, the most expensive prank in the directory’s history, though: the
travel agency went on to sue it for gross misconduct and won $10 million.
I hope it managed to bring back the exotic travel package after that.
Although these days…well nevermind.
5.
The missing “p,” 2007 (Boy does this remind me of a joke in middle school.
Anyway, let’s get back to the typos…)
When you misspell someone’s name, it can be awkward, but when you misspell a name that
can cost you half a million, it’s downright frustrating.
An unfortunate seller on eBay learned this lesson the hard way.
He put a bottle of 1852 Allsopp’s Arctic Ale on sale — a valuable antique.
However, he made a typo and listed it as Allsop’s Arctic Ale (with only one “p”), leaving
it largely unnoticed by connoisseurs.
As a result, one bidder bought it from him for $304 and immediately posted it back on
eBay — this time with no mistakes.
After over 150 bids, the bottle was sold for just over a half million dollars.
Jackpot!
Or should I say “beer pot”?
Have you ever made a grammar mistake that made you pay for it?
Share your embarrassing stories down in the comments — let’s learn from them together!
I, for example, once made the most awkward misspelling in the word “public,” failing
to type a very important letter in the middle.
Still blushing when I remember that.
Anyway, don’t forget to give this video a like, share it with your grammatically inaccurate
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