Write well (not good), write often (not alot), be careful (not carfull), and check your work twice. Just to be safe, have someone else read it. Bad grammar can cost you!

Deanne Schulz tipped me to a story from 2006 (before this blog’s birth). It’s just as timely today. Globe and Mail reported a story about a grammatical error that cost Rogers Communications (Canada’s AT&T) more than $2 million CAD.

Rogers had signed a contract with a company known as Aliant, Inc. to string communications lines across thousands of poles in the Maritimes. Rogers would pay Aliant about (aboot in Canadian) $9.60 CAD for each pole. Rogers was happy.

Then the nightmare began. Rogers was informed that the contract was being canceled and the new rate was going up, up, up. Rogers was dumbfounded. “How could this be,” they wondered, “the contract is valid for another two years.”

If not for a second comma in a single sentence, the validity of a contract and millions of dollars wouldn’t be in question. Here is the sentence from page seven of the contract: 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.” [Emphasis mine]

That second comma turned “and thereafter for successive five year terms” into a parenthetical expression which meant the sentence could be interpreted as if that expression were deleted thus applying the option to terminate to the first five-year period.

Canada’s Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) decided the argument. It wasn’t pretty for Rogers: “Based on the rules of punctuation,” the comma in question “allows for the termination of the [contract] at any time, without cause, upon one-year’s written notice,” CRTC said.

Aliant’s new contract tripled the amount Rogers had to pay to lease the space on the poles from $9 to $28.05 per pole.

That’s one helluvan expensive comma!

“Comma quirk irks Rogers“

P.S. It’s Deanne’s birthday today. Happy Birthday, Publicity Chick! How lucky is she to have been born on National Grammar Day?