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Lack of Oxford Comma Could Cost Maine Company Millions in Overtime Dispute
- bob_rad 10y agoThis should totally be a case study in grammar lessons. This comma could cost you millions kids, pay attention!
- JetSpiegel 10y agoOriginal Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.h...
- stupidcar 10y ago"I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God."
- bandrami 10y agoNow, if you make it singular, it's the presence of an Oxford comma that makes it ambiguous: "I'd like to thank my mother, Ayn Rand, and God" Whereas "I'd like to thank my mother, Ayn Rand and God" As long as English uses commas for both apposition and list separation, there will always be ambiguity no matter which comma convention is used.
- OJFord 10y agoSeems like a bit of a tortured example to me, is the order really important? "I'd like to thank God, and my mother, Ayn Rand, ..." > As long as English uses commas for both apposition and list separation Then don't, if it's a concern. "I'd like to thank my mother (Ayn Rand) and God ..." A lack of an Oxford comma is always an ambiguity. The reverse 'problem' - which I've never encountered 'in the wild' - can be dealt with in so many ways.
- jakelazaroff 10y ago> A lack of an Oxford comma is always an ambiguity. Not true. The example given ("I'd like to thank my mother, Ayn Rand and God") lacks a serial comma yet is unambiguously a list of three items.
- noja 10y agoWhy do you have that first comma. "I'd like to thank my mother Ayn Rand, and God" is clearer.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- in_cahoots 10y agoYes, but how do you handle the case where your mother is not Ayn Rand and you want to thank three individuals?
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- rayiner 10y agoThe law in question excluded "canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of" agricultural products from the requirement for 1.5x overtime pay. In a sane world where everyone used the Oxford comma, that sentence would be clear and the last item in the sequence would be "packing (for shipment or distribution)" and the drivers would be entitled to their overtime pay. But the Maine Legislature's drafting manual recommends omitting the Oxford comma so the above sentence is ambiguous. And it's really ambiguous because either meaning could really be what the Legislature intended.
- blantonl 10y agoAnd it's really ambiguous because either meaning could really be what the Legislature intended. Initially, I was going to say that they should evaluate the merits of the law based on the spirit of the law. But you are right, it really could go either way.
- rmc 10y ago> they should evaluate the merits of the law based on the spirit of the law Some laws say "if there's an ambiguity, then take the interpretation that's most favourable to $PARTY". e.g. some consumer protection laws say ambiguity in prewritten sales contracts must be interpreted in the customers favour. This recognises the power imbalance between joe soap and a megacorp, and tries to address that.
- Nadya 10y agoDevil's Advocate: In a sane world where nobody uses the Oxford comma, that sentence would be equally as clear. The other meaning would have needed to be written differently, in an Oxford commaless world: >"The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing (for shipment or distribution) or distribution of:" /End Devil's Advocate Since the law says not to use an Oxford comma, writing the rule should take that into consideration. I'd rule in favor of the workers because distribution is clearly not included in the Oxford commaless list which is what the drafting guidelines say to do. I actually see no ambiguity in this case because the law should have been written without the Oxford comma in mind at all.
- weeksie 10y agoI don't think I've ever heard an impassioned argument against the Oxford Comma. I mean, I have no problem with it, but there seems to be a belief that this is a less filling/tastes great holy war, but really, omitting the serial comma is fairly archaic at this point. At least in my experience. Sometimes lists need one, sometimes they don't. At this point in the evolution of our written language that should be a fairly unambiguous proposition.
- leephillips 10y ago"omitting the serial comma is fairly archaic at this point" Wish that were true! But many news organization style guides condemn the Oxford comma, with sometimes disastrous results: http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2016/12/06/for-want-of-an-oxford-comma/ http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/linguafranca/2016/12/06/for-w...
- mercer 10y agoIs there any good argument for eschewing the extra comma when it clearly disambiguates the meaning of the sentence? I can't think of one, but I also find it (slightly) difficult to believe that anyone smart enough to write an article would insist on ambiguity for no good reason... EDIT: to disambiguate my own comment: with 'when' I meant 'in cases where leaving out the comma causes ambiguity'. Personally I try to prioritize clarity so sometimes I will use an extra comma, and sometimes I won't.
- tetromino_ 10y agoThe extra comma sometimes creates ambiguity. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma#Creating_ambiguity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_comma#Creating_ambiguit... for example.
- jakelazaroff 10y agoIt can create ambiguity as well as remove it, depending on which terms can be appositives to other terms. Classic example: "To my parents, Ayn Rand and God." (ambiguous without the comma) "To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God." (ambiguous with the comma)
- seanwilson 10y agoIn almost every case I see people arguing for an Oxford comma I see a sentence that should be broken up or restructured to make it less ambiguous. A sentence where not noticing a comma can drastically alter it's meaning (especially when it's a losing battle to make everyone understand the Oxford comma) is not a good sentence.
- egwynn 10y agoAgreed. Such semantic fragility indicates a design flaw, IMO.
- unethical_ban 10y agoGive an example that doesn't use parentheses or a bulleted list. It seems clear to me that if you are listing multiple items in a sentence, a comma should separate every item in the list. Alternatively, we could use the semi-colon for lists. This is what I do sometimes at work, especially when the items in the list may contain commas.
- pricechild 10y agoIn this example, what does "for shipment" add to the meaning? I figure omitting that would make this far clearer.
- bandrami 10y agoMeh. DRY. The conjunction serves the exact same purpose as the comma, as well as signalling the end of the list. Any construction that is made ambiguously appositive by the absence of an Oxford comma has a parallel construction that is made ambiguous by the presence of an Oxford comma.
- jotux 10y ago>Give an example that doesn't use parentheses or a bulleted list. Why the arbitrary restriction on bulleted lists? Situations like this seem ideally suited for a simple list.
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- dmckeon 10y agoAlso posted to HN as: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13886467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13886467 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13879156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13879156 For me the lesson here is "use unambigious language" rather than "{always|never} use an Oxford comma". The 29-page decision shows that the "Oxford comma" is only part of the court's interpretation of the law, and shows that the court examined several paths to reach an interpretation. http://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca1/16-1901/16-1901-2017-03-13.pdf?ts=1489437006 http://cases.justia.com/federal/appellate-courts/ca1/16-1901...
- d--b 10y agoOr: why AI is a long way to understand natural languages.
- kaosjester 10y agoThe sheer amount of misused punctuation in this comments section seems to indicate a systematic problem.
- christotty 10y agoI believe you mean systemic.
- danielweber 10y agoMuphry's Law.
- PuffinBlue 10y agoThe article asks: > 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? I'd say it does both. It exempts workers who package for shipment AND workers who distribute. Discuss... :-)
- abritinthebay 10y agoCould be! But the fact it is ambiguous means that it's bad law and effectively that's what the decision was: it's a reasonable interpretation based on the language used so they win.
- briandear 10y agoAre shipment and distribution fundamentally different? Seem like synonyms to me and thus the lack of comma ought not matter because: "package for shipment -- or distribution." I guess my question is how packing would be materially different for shipment or distribution. Since it seems analogous, a reasonably intelligent person could assume that the sentence could read, "packing for shipment or shipment" that implies that shipment is a separate activity while packing for shipment is another activity. -- since shipping is really a subset of distribution actions. My question is why they sued -- clarity should have been sought before engaging in the work. It wasn't like these guys were unaware of the law. They chose to read it in the most advantageous way rather than obtaining clarity before working.
- donarb 10y agoWhat person goes and reads all applicable laws before taking a job? You've got federal/state/local laws to sift through. And who's to say that a company can't hire lawyers to comb through old laws looking for loopholes to screw over workers?
- InitialLastName 10y agopackaging for shipment is a different thing than distribution. Packaging for shipment might be the same thing as packaging for distribution.
- bandrami 10y agoThe case was decided on equity, not grammar. What the comma style did was give the company a specious argument to make.
- jessaustin 10y agoIANAL, but if this verdict were based on equity it would have helped out everybody on cannery row, not just the drivers.
- bandrami 10y agoWell, "equity"
- dredmorbius 10y agoOf possible relevance: The New York Times, per its internal style guide, eschews the Oxford Comma. I smell a possible revolt on the part of Mr. Victor.
- burntwater 10y agoMy question is, what makes the canning industry so unique and special that it's deserving of exemptions from fair pay?
- briandear 10y agoNot even that -- the fact that legislators actually wrote this as a law is interesting. There is likely a historical reason or something unique about that industry that prompted this.
- jessaustin 10y agoProbable historical reason: the industry had money and therefore political power, and its workers were poor immigrants therefore without political power.
- xsmasher 10y agoWhen crop X comes in from the field / comes in on the ship, you only have so much time to get it cleaned, cooked, and canned. The law seems archaic when applied to the year-round, forced-fertilization, industrialized dairy industry.
- SilasX 10y agoYou see this a lot when filing your taxes with software. "Are you part of a railroad worker's retirement plan that started before 1975? Do you have income from a farm that exported to Europe or northern Mexico?"
- maxerickson 10y agoThe work is seasonal and not necessarily predictable on a daily basis. So the overtime is part of a short work stint that the employee knows is coming when they are hired for the temporary job rather than the way the business is organized to work all of the time. I guess I don't see why that deserves an exception, but I imagine that is where they are coming from.
- runeks 10y agoIt's not just canning, but basically the packing and distribution of food from producers to consumers. It's possible that, during past time of higher inflation, the government wanted to avoid higher costs in this area.
- mbillie1 10y agoAlternate headline: workers to receive appropriate compensation following accurate interpretation of state law.
- wlll 10y agoI have never fully understood the insistence that employers should be allowed to demand unpaid work from their employees. Surely if your business is only viable with coerced labour then it isn't a viable business? Or maybe if you need employees help to run it without pay them then they can be given a share of the business so they can benefit from the future returns that their efforts provide?
- cortesoft 10y agoNo one is demanding unpaid work. The question is whether they are owed 1.5x their salary or just their salary. Overtime rules say that if you work overtime (and the definition of overtime varies by state), they have to pay you 1.5x your salary. In this case, they were only paying their regular salary. No one was working for free.
- wlll 10y agoAh, gotcha. For some reason I always associated overtime with "unpaid". Probably because when I was a kid and had crappy jobs there would always be stuff that would need to be done at the start and end of every shift that outside my regular hours and therefore unpaid. I wasn't savvy enough to ask for pay, or to tell them where to stick it. edit concrete example: Blockbuster Video. Shop closed at 11, the time I stopped getting paid. At that point I had to lock up and do accounts stuff, clean, and general admin (plugging the CC machine into the phone line so it could phone home and get lists of updated cards to watch for) etc. Would usually take about half an hour ISTR.
- veritas3241 10y agoGameStop is a company that had similar tactics. Had to close the registers, process and late trade-ins, and close/clean the store. Then they trusted me to take thousands of dollars to the bank and drop it in the slot. But all of it was unpaid.
- hughlang 10y agoThey could have done so much more with that first sentence. Example: "An appeals court ruling on Monday was a victory for truck drivers, punctuation pedants and nazis"
- madenine 10y agoIgnoring the comma issue, it still seems poorly worded. "The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:" Lets group related activities based on what workers might be doing/where they might be doing it. If the law intended to exclude truck drivers from overtime, our groups could be: - Canning, Processing, Preserving, Freezing, Drying (processing facility?) - Marketing (?) - Storing, Packing for Shipment (Warehouse) - Distribution (On the road) Why is one sentence trying to define rules for all those groups?
- logfromblammo 10y agoI think there is a legal principle that takes all enumerations as closed sets. You may enumerate a set as an example of a class. You might say, "animals, such as lions, tigers and bears." If you wrote that as legalese, only lions, tigers, and bears would be considered "animals" for the purpose of the chapter. Legalese has to be really specific with respect to lists, otherwise clever lawyers can argue their way around the holes in whatever manner best benefits their client. If you're going to specify any sub-activity of the industry in question, you have to specify all of them that you with to include for the purposes of the law. I would say that distribution includes shipment, so "packing for shipment or distribution" is unnecessarily redundant. As such, I would prefer the interpretation of "packing for shipment, or distribution". Just as you wouldn't say "lions, tigers, tigers, and bears" you would never say "shipment or distribution" as its own clause. Distribution is shipment. So to make it unambiguous, you could use stricter redundancy aversion: "packing for shipment or shipment".
- gnicholas 10y agoThe title of this HN post, like nearly every headline I've seen for this lawsuit, is misleading. The headlines makes it seem as if the company forgot an Oxford comma and is now losing millions as a result of having made a typographical error. This is not the case. There is a statute that does not have a comma where one might be, and the litigants fought over whether the lack of a comma toward the end of a list ought to be read in light of the Oxford comma convention or not. And it's actually more complicated, as the last item in the list is (potentially) compound, which makes it difficult to tell whether the "and" is to be attached to the final element alone, or to be a binding of the final element and previous elements. Not that this its uncommon for articles to have misleading headlines, but I've been surprised at the extent to which nearly every article (save this one [1], by the ever-precise law professors at the Volokh Conspiracy) have misrepresented the case (or misunderstood it?) to make it seem like a company's typo led to a million dollar loss. 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/15/a-b-or-c-vs-a-b-or-c-the-serial-comma-and-the-law/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/201...
- sk5t 10y agoThe headline does not suggest or imply that lack of a comma in a document the company itself drafted is the basis for the overtime liability--only that the company may suffer the consequences.
- gnicholas 10y agoWhen something is said to be "lacking", it implies that something should be there but isn't. The headline only introduces one actor — the company. In this context, there is only one party to put fault on for the "lack" of the comma, which is the company. When you read the article, you see that the comma is not from a company document, but from a statute. So the "lack" is due to legislative drafting. But reading just the headline, how could one have imagined that the "lack" was due to an unnamed actor that drafted an unnamed statute? While the implication I described is not the clearest implication, there is no way a reader could see this headline and have any clue that what really happened was: Legislators drafted ambiguous statute and company's interpretation lost out But that would make for a lousy headline, I suppose.
- kolbe 10y agoIt's kind of amazing that we even write laws this way anymore. There isn't much to gain from freely allowing legislators to use the English language to dictate our system of rules. I'm sure there are much clearer templates that everyone should follow.
- swayvil 10y agoYes, law should be written like code. A "tree of nested assertions" or whatever you call it. Law is code. The hardware is masses of people.
- bmcusick 10y agoThere should be an "or" before the word "packing" if "packing for shipment or distribution" is a single phrase (rather than two alternatives). The Oxford Comma debate is a sideshow. It's all about where you find the "or", which indicates the last choice.
- danbruc 10y agoCouldn't they just have looked up the intended meaning of the law? I mean laws or not made by just writing down the law in its final form, there are designs, discussions, and drafts. Wouldn't it be likely that there are documents showing the intended meaning more clearly, for example by listing the exceptions as bullet points? In my opinion that would provide a way better argument to settle the issue one way or another than appealing to grammar rules and style guides.
- shmageggy 10y agoDo we expect the truckers to do said research in order to know how to interpret the law? Of course not. The whole point is that the law should be explicit and unambiguous as written.
- sixhobbits 10y agoThere are two types of people this world: those who use oxford commas, those who don't and those who should.
- lotsofpulp 10y agoI wonder how Maine is able to exempt works from overtime, wouldn't that contradict federal overtime laws? https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime_pay.htm https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime_pay.htm
- maxerickson 10y agoThe federal law has lots of exemptions that apply to various hourly workers.
- lotsofpulp 10y agoOh, I thought the only exemption was for the usual adminstrative/white collar type work: https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/final2016/SmallBusinessGuide.pdf https://www.dol.gov/whd/overtime/final2016/SmallBusinessGuid...
- verbatim 10y agoThe longstanding question posed by Vampire Weekend has finally been answered: Oakhurst Dairy cares.
- Joeboy 10y agohttps://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/11/roger-casement-the-gay-irish-humanitarian-who-was-hanged-on-a-comma https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2011/11/roge...
- jeffmk 10y agoAvoiding the Oxford comma is the JavaScript automatic semicolon insertion of English grammar. Each has odd exceptions that have to be thought about, and each is polarizing. In both cases I really wonder: why the insistence on adding to cognitive load?
- boltzmannbrain 10y agoJFK and Stalin are still the best proponents for using the Oxford comma: http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Oxford-Comma.jpg http://www.verbicidemagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/...
- ape4 10y agoPerhaps they should adopt programming language like syntax for laws. eg You will be jailed for [kill, hurt, steal].
- donarb 10y agoDefine 'kill'. What about self-defense, soldier in time of war, accidental, negligence? You're going to need an overly large switch statement to decide, and that's just one crime.
- mcbits 10y agoIf laws were codified in a machine-friendly format, automatic code analysis could alert lawmakers and the public to ambiguity, conflicts, redundancy, unused code, opportunities for optimization and verbosity.
- gtirloni 10y agoInstead of discussing a grammar issue, why not go back to the intent of the law and apply it as... intended? What were the lawmakers thinking when they wrote that law? Are they still around? Are there any notes or recorded sessions discussing this?
- kazinator 10y agoIt is perfectly clear here that "distribution" is a separate list element, set off by the final disjunction "or": The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: The pattern being: A, B, C, D or E. This does not change even if we add a spurious comma after D: A, B, C, D, or E. D and E are still separately listed items. Quite simply, D or E cannot be a single list item without being preceded by some conjunction. If the intended meaning were "packing (for shipment or distribution)" to the exclusion of "distribution", then the conjunction "and" or "or" would be required before that entire phrase: A, B, C, D or E for X or Y. Here the entire phrase E for X or Y (such as packing for shipment or distribution) is now the last list item (and, again, that is clear whether or not we add a spurious comma after D). The "or" in (for shipment or distribution) belongs to this inner phrase and therefore cannot serve as the delimiting conjunction of the last list item; another delimiter is required. Thus, the insertion of the comma makes no difference. The alternative interpretation is hard to justify, because it is based on the claim that a meaning-altering conjunction is missing, even though the existing text happens to be grammatical.
- timthelion 10y agoWhy is everyone discussing the grammar and no one questioning why laws have such silly exceptions? Why should there be an exception for the packaging of perishable goods? It is not like the goods cannot be packaged if the workers are paid extra for working over-time. And it is not like a well planned logistics chain should necessarilly be forced to have workers working overtime. So really, this exception is just a gift to a specific industry.
- Mz 10y agoAs a freelance writer, this is sort of cool to me. "The pen is mightier than the sword" and all that. A little comma -- or lack thereof -- moves millions of dollars in one direction or the other. Food for thought.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dsfyu404ed 10y agoMeanwhile a complete jerk move did cost Maine university employees thousands of dollars in unpaid wages over the course of a decade.
- j_joshua 10y agoThe canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of... More telling is the difference between the verbs ending in "ing" and those not. canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, and packing are the actions. shipment and distribution relate to packing. If distribution was supposed to be a separate activity, they would have used "distributing of" instead of "distribution of".