A missing comma cost this company $5 million

Missing comma proves expensive!

I read a fun story on BBC about a Portland-based dairy company that got into financial straits over a grammatical omission.

Three lorry drivers for Oakhurst Dairy took the company to court, claiming it owed them years of unpaid overtime wages.

The state’s laws said overtime wasn’t due for workers involved in,

“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”.

The drivers successfully argued because the legalese had no comma after the word “shipment” and before “or distribution”, Oakhurst dairy owed them overtime.

On the other hand, if a comma existed between both words, the law would have ruled out workers who distribute perishable foods.

The company settled the court case for a whopping $5m because of a missing comma.

Yes, commas matter, particularly if you’re drafting anything legalese, academic, or certain types of journalism.

But what about if you’re writing online?

Spending hours sweating every sentence and paragraph before pressing publish isn’t always a great use of time. For most online writers, publishing more content is more effective.

Give that article or piece of content a quick pass, review a simple self-editing checklist, and move on to another piece of content.

Other types of writers stick two fingers to grammar nazis.

Copywriters regularly break grammatical rules because their copy flows or reads better. They’re more interested in the conversions, not 100% scores in a grammar-checking app.

Literary and popular fiction authors break these rules as well. Read anything by Stephen King, Sally Rooney, or James Patterson, and you’ll find dangling modifiers, missing dialogue attributions, and errant commas.

I edit my emails once or twice before I press send. But writing daily emails means the occasional ttypo slips in (whoops!)

Sometimes, readers write to me when I use British rather than American English.

But, I realised a while ago it’s best to learn the basic rules of grammar and then break them when it matters.

Or should I say “realized” for my American readers…

My most embarrassing editing mistake?

That happened in my 20s.

I’d a part-time gig as a sub-editor for The Sunday Tribune.

It was a national broadsheet newspaper in Ireland, with over 177,000 readers.

Many famous Irish writers, including Booker Prize winners John Banville and Paul Lynch, got their start at the paper.

Unfortunately, the newspaper went out of business in 2011.

(Nothing to do with what I’m about to tell you!)

A sub-editor spends their day writing headlines and captions for news stories and articles. They also grammar and fact-check early drafts by the newspaper’s journalists.

I enjoyed writing headlines and captions, but grammar and fact-checking?

Less so.

Proofreading a draft on screen was difficult because the Adobe InDesign files were text-heavy.

The noisy office, tiny font size, and 17-inch monitor didn’t help.

So, I printed out the new stories, put on headphones, and read the stories line-by-line several times.

I marked up my corrections with a red pen.

Then, I opened InDesign, edited the text, and returned it to the editor.

One Sunday morning, I walked to the shop and bought the newspaper.

I brewed a cup of coffee and opened the business supplement.

I’d sub-edited the front page of that supplement the previous Friday.

I couldn’t believe it.

The caption on a front-page photo read, “Deniss business…”

Did you catch my embarrassing mistake?

I felt sick about my embarrassing mistake.

A few days later, the editor explained to me:

“As a sub-editor, you’re the last line of defense before the paper goes live.”

(Oddly enough, that wasn’t the end of my journalism career.)

These days, I don’t edit anything that goes to print. And it’s much easier to find and fix grammar mistakes and other errors.

I discovered that a spell checker and a readthrough, whether on screen or paper, isn’t enough.

I keep a self-editing checklist next to my desk. It contains a list of mistakes and other issues to watch out for.

I’d recommend doing the same if you’re writing or publishing online.

Give your content one to two passes unless it’s academic, legalese, or commercially sensitive. Then, press publish. You can edit and ask for apologies later on.

You’ll notice I used the word“content”.”

That’s deliberate. I don’t see books as content. For long-form, hire an editor. You’ll get from the second or third draft to publish much faster.