Maine legislature's style guide discourages Oxford comma; truckers win $10 million

[GoesStation]

If you habitually omit Oxford commas, remember to read your lists very carefully for clarity. Maine truck drivers stand to win ten million dollars by showing that a Maine law that was probably meant to exclude them can be read to require overtime pay. When the legislature drafted the law, they followed their style guide which discourages Oxford commas.

 

[emsr2d2]

Any chance you can show us the relevant sentence/paragraph which disastrously omitted the Oxford comma?

 

[GoesStation]

Certainly. It says that a rule requiring overtime pay does not apply to "The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of: [agricultural, fish, and dairy products.]" The drivers were engaged in the distribution of qualifying products; their lawyer successfully argued that the final excluded class was "packing for shipment or distribution".

 

[jutfrank]

their lawyer successfully argued that the final excluded class was "packing for shipment or distribution".

Fair enough I suppose as that's how it reads. I wonder who it was that wrote that particular style guide and what their reasons behind the decision not to use Oxford commas were. Maybe it goes to show you shouldn't automatically assume that style guides always deserve their authority.

 

[GoesStation]

I've just read the relevant bit of the Maine Legislative Drafting Manual. While it does say "don’t use a comma between the penultimate and the last item of a series," it goes on to warn against the kind of error that led to the award and to explain how to write so as to avoid it.

 

[Tdol]

Nice work by whoever spotted the interpretation. There was a big case in European law about what they meant, as translations had sometimes used slight variations, allowing people to argue something like whether it could include agents or not.