The $5 Million Punctuation Mark

Is there an alert reader out there, who before reading this any further, can tell us what does the revised Maine state law that lists exempted tasks from being eligible to be paid at time and a half rates to truckers, and David Berkowitz, the still living, incarcerated serial killer who called himself 'Son of Sam' have in common?

Give up? Semicolons.

Maybe you need to be a New Yorker to have latched onto something the Daily News Pulitzer prize winning columnist Jimmy Breslin said of the anonymous letters that were being forwarded to him in the summer of 1977 by the self-described 'Son of Sam' as he was carrying out his serial killings through NYC.

After the apprehension of David Berkowitz for the 'Son of Sam' murders Jimmy declared that David was the first serial killer he knew who knew how to use semicolons.

Maine, in an effort to plug up a punctuation loophole that led a Portland dairy to pay three truckers who sued the Oakhurst Dairy in 2014 for $5 million for unpaid overtime pay over a four year period, inserted a series of semicolons to replace commas in the text of what became an issue that reached the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit for a ruling last year. That's right; it became a Federal case.

Because of what was ruled a missing Oxford comma, the court ruled that there was enough ambiguity in the exemption language that the court was siding with the truckers.

For those who don't know what the Oxford comma is, Daniel Victor's lively piece in today's NYT tells all. In short, the comma is seen as required by certain keepers of the flame when you're creating a list, a series of items, such as:

...red, blue, and white. The second comma is the Oxford comma named after the Oxford University, an arbiter of such things.

This makes me think of anyone I was in school with who might have written the second comma when tested, only to have points taken off in red ink (usually 2 points) by a teacher who was subversive to the Oxford comma, and did not abide by the University Press.

This also reminds me of the George Carlin routine that had people in Purgatory for eating ham sandwiches on Fridays before the Vatican's Ecumenical Council revised some of its rules for Catholics to eat by. Do they get released upward now that rules have changed? Do my penalized classmates get their grades revised for their heresy?

Mr. Victor gives us the Oxford comma rules as stated by another arbiter of style, the NYT. The Times takes the stance of saying there is no need for the second, or last comma before the conjunction. Thus, red, blue and white is all right. (For the record, I don't agree.)

Years and years ago I remember James Thurber's 'My Years with Ross,' his remembrances of life with the legendary editor of The New Yorker, Harold Ross. Thurber and Ross apparently had opposing views for the inclusion, or the exclusion of the comma. They had titanic arguments over it, likely over scotch. (I don't remember which side either man was on.)

The NYT Style book that Mr. Victor refers to states on page 67:

• In general, do not use a comma before and or or in a series. Thus, no Oxford comma.

And as with anything to do with grammar, there is a comma used, when for example you might be writing:

• A martini is made of gin and dry vermouth, and a chilled glass is essential. Note the comma after vermouth and before and.

This of course gives you insight into what the editors at The Times are thinking of come 6 o'clock and it's time to make plans for the evening.

I remember the teachers telling us in the 60s the jury was out on using, or not using the comma. Just be consistent. If you use it, use it throughout whatever your writing. This seemed like good advice.

No writing about the comma can proceed without mentioning Mary Norris who wrote the book, 'Between You & Me, Confessions of a Comma Queen.'

Ms. Norris's book, although fairly recently published, was written before the dairy/overtime case in Maine became a Federal case. Ms. Norris, like all worthy New Yorkers, came from somewhere else, in her case Cleveland. The employment that probably financed her life and provided her with enough material to write the book springs from working in the copy department of The New Yorker for over 30 years. Those years however did not coincide with the Thurber/Ross years.

Ms. Norris, on page 93 of her book declares she is a "comma apostate." She feels a comma preceding and is redundant. "Isn't the and sufficient? After all, that's what the other commas in a series stand for: 'Lions and tigers and bears.'"

She doesn't feel ambiguity is present or not present when the comma is used or not. She goes on: "Pressed to come up with an example of a series that was unambiguously ambiguous [meaning definitely ambiguous] proved so elusive that I wondered whether perhaps we could do without the comma after all." This of course would put her on the opposite side of the First Circuit Federal Appeals court.

The original passage in the law concerning overtime went as follows:

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.

Mr. Victor explains that "what followed the last comma in the first sentence was the crux of the matter: "packing for shipment or distribution of."

The court ruled that is was nor clear whether the law exempted the distribution of the three categories that followed, or it exempted packing for the shipment or distribution of them."

Huh? As many times as it read it I can't see the ambiguity. In programming, when using Boolean expression the use of the word and means that both condition on wither side of the word and have to be true for the instructions to proceed.

Thus, select balls when = to blue and white means the balls have to be blue and white (true on both sides of the and to be selected. If they aren't, they don't get selected.

If the statement reads select balls when = to blue or white the condition is much broader. Less restrictive. The balls can be blue or white white to be selected. 

I've read it described as if you use and, then two bridges have to be crossed. If you use or, then only one bridge has to be crossed.

Given that logic, it would seem the law as originally written has no ambiguity. If any of the described conditions on either side of the word or are true, then overtime pay does not apply.

Apparently the court did not come down with a ruling that would cement the need for an Oxford comma in all wording. A $5 million settlement was achieved, and everyone seems happy that the wording now makes use of semicolons (thus the commonality with the serial killer Son of Sam).  Semicolons! Can you believe it? Probably more bedeviling than apostrophes.

The text of the new wording goes:

The canning; processing; preserving; freezing; drying; marketing; storing; packing; for shipment; or distribution of:

1. Agriculture produce;
2. Meat and fish products; and
3. Perishable foods.

It is probably too early to tell if we will now have the "Maine semicolon" to contend with. The lawyer for the truckers, David G. Webbert, readily admits that if there had been a comma after "shipment" the meaning would have been clear. "That comma would have sunk our ship."

Lynne Truss, the author of 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves" whose book humorously tackled punctuation rules, dedicated her book:

"To the memory of the striking Bolshevik printers of St Petersburg who, in 1905, demanded to be paid the same rate for punctuation marks as  for letters, and thereby directly precipitated the first Russian Revolution" (She undoubtedly purposely leaves the period out after St. to see if we're paying attention.)

For the want of a horse the kingdom was was lost. For the want of a comma the Oakhurst Dairy had to cough up $5 million in back overtime pay.

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