5 of the Most Disastrous Punctuation Mistakes in History
Saying so might not make you popular at parties, but punctuation matters. That’s why novelty stores sell bumper stickers about eating grandmas and dictator strippers. Sure, you can probably let it slide in your DMs, but pay attention to it in your official paperwork, or you might end up in a situation like…
NASA’s $150 Million Missing Hyphen
In 1962, NASA launched Mariner 1, a probe intended to collect data from Venus, and hit the “destruct” button less than five minutes later. It turned out a missing overbar, a hyphen-like symbol, in its programming had taken the probe off-course, sending it for a crash landing. It cost NASA $150 million in today’s money, inspiring sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke to award it the title of “The Most Expensive Hyphen in History.”
The ‘Fruit, Plants’ That Cost the U.S. Government $38 Million
In case you haven’t noticed, most of the U.S. isn’t a very hospitable place for growing fruit. The U.S. government took advantage of that fact in the 1800s, imposing stiff tariffs on imported fruit, especially tropical fruit. An exception was supposed to be made for “fruit plants, tropical and semi-tropical for the purpose of propagation and cultivation,” but the comma was accidentally placed after “fruit” instead of “plants.” That meant all fruit was exempt from the tariffs, costing the government $38 million in today’s money. Good news for Hawaiian pizza fans, bad news for taxpayers.
The Oxford Comma That Struck a Blow for Workers Rights
In 2017, a group of Maine dairy delivery drivers sued their employer for unpaid overtime, which the dairy company claimed they weren’t eligible for because their service — distribution of perishable foods — was exempt under state law. Their lawyers argued, however, that a missing comma between “packing for shipment” and “or distribution” meant the law only covered both services as a single act. Since the drivers didn’t pack anything, a judge ruled in their favor, and the dairy company proposed a $5 million settlement on the condition that they shut up forever.
The Commas That Weren’t Supposed to Be in ‘Ulysses’
When James Joyce’s Ulysses was first published in 1922, problems caused by both the author (who turned in a nearly illegible manuscript) and the printers (who didn’t speak English) meant the book was riddled with typographical errors. Five thousand of them, to be exact. Hundreds of those “errors” were in only one passage, where an editor had added commas to what was supposed to be one long, unpunctuated sentence. It took seven years and $300,000 to “correct” Ulysses in the 1980s, and students everywhere have been cursing it ever since.
The Comma That Hanged Roger Casement
In 1916, Roger Casement didn’t deny that he’d sought aid from Germany for the Easter Rising in Ireland. However, his lawyer argued that, depending on the interpretation of the grammatically ambiguous law, Casement hadn’t actually committed treason because the acts occurred in a foreign country. The judges actually had to go squint at the original copy of the law and determine if a certain mark was “a comma, bracket or even a fold in the paper.” They eventually decided it was a comma, resulting in Casement’s conviction and execution. He complained at the time about “such antiquaries as these, to hang a man’s life upon a comma and throttle him with a semi-colon,” and not to take sides about Irish nationalism, but the man had a point.