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Fight, Never Surrender or Fight Never, Surrender

Years ago, a teacher told our class how Caesar could have lost a battle because of the placement of a comma. (of course, they neglected to tell us it would have been in Latin which means the point would have been lost but that's up to teachers and badly educating people) - but the point was never lost on me.

I'm a stickler for good punctuation (errors in blog posts aside, of course ) but I saw this story on RocketBoom and wanted to follow it up. Burt Rosen would likely find the humour in this, since I was beating him up on some comma issues in some user docs recently.

The statement?
The agreement “shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.”

I read this - and I agree with the CRTC - I can cancel this agreement with written notice by one year. But Rogers wanted to ensure they couldn't cancel in the first five years.

Poor Rogers - this little gaffe will cost them over 2 million dollars. A few years ago, that would only be 1.5 million US - nowadays, it's getting pretty close to the same amount in US as it is in Canada.

globeandmail.com : Comma quirk irks Rogers

Comments

Anonymous said…
You may have read it, but there's a brilliant book called Eats, Shoots & Leave by Lynne Truss (ISBN 1861976771) all about punctuation.

Stewart

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