Plan B Forum

Maine: A class-action lawsuit about overtime pay for truck drivers hinged entirely on a debate that has bitterly divided friends, families and foes: The dreaded - or totally necessary - Oxford comma, perhaps the most polarising of punctuation marks.

What ensued in the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals, and in a 29-page court decision handed down on Monday, was an exercise in high-stakes grammar pedantry that could cost a dairy company in Portland, Maine, an estimated $US10 million ($13 million).

In 2014, three truck drivers sued Oakhurst Dairy, seeking more than four years' worth of overtime pay that they had been denied. Maine law requires workers to be paid 1.5 times their normal rate for each hour worked after 40 hours, but it carves out some exemptions.

A quick punctuation lesson before we proceed: In a list of three or more items - like "beans, potatoes and rice"- some people would put a comma after potatoes, and some would leave it out. A lot of people feel very, very strongly about it.

The debate over commas is often a pretty inconsequential one, but it was anything but for the truck drivers. Note the lack of Oxford comma - also known as the serial comma - in the following state law, which says overtime rules do 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.

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.

If there were a comma after "shipment," it might have been clear that the law exempted the distribution of perishable foods. But the appeals court on Monday sided with the drivers, saying the absence of a comma produced enough uncertainty to rule in their favour. It reversed a lower court decision.

In other words: Oxford comma defenders won this round.

Continues here....

Lord Jim wrote:I'm a big fan of commas, particularly being someone, who, on occasion, (or so I am told,) has a proclivity, and penchant, for writing fairly lengthy sentences, employing flowery prose, which, contain a rather large number of dependent, and independent, clauses, that, but for the use of commas, might tend to look "run on", or overly wordy.

Gob wrote:

Lord Jim wrote:I'm a big fan of commas, particularly being someone, who, on occasion, (or so I am told), has a proclivity and penchant for writing fairly lengthy sentences, employing flowery prose, which contain a rather large number of dependent, and independent, clauses that, but for the use of commas, might tend to look "run on", or overly wordy.

FTFY

Big RR wrote:Meade--you would put a comma before and after a parenthetical statement?

who, on occasion, (or so I am told),

Big RR wrote:I don't know the orrect punctuation for your evidently example, but I do not think the two commas belong here

who, on occasion, (or so I am told),

Personally, I would retain the one you entered after the parenthetical and would remove the one after "occasion" because the use of parentheses obviates the need for it.

Lord Jim wrote:I'm a big fan of commas, particularly being someone, who, on occasion, (or so I am told) has a proclivity and penchant for because I writeing fairly lengthy long, overly wordy sentences employing flowery prose which contain a rather large number of dependent and independent clauses that, but for the use of commas, might tend to look "run on".

Wednesday’s ceremony to mark the completion of the restoration will be in the presence of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, and a representative of Pope Francis.

Crackpot wrote:I would guess two since the pope isn't part of the Orthodox Church

The team is dismantling its worksite ahead of a ceremony Wednesday to mark the completion of the renovation, in the presence of two representatives of dueling Christian denominations — Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who is the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, and a representative of Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic Church.

MajGenl.Meade wrote: All that money spent on a farcical pretense - tragic