two-million dollar comma

[alexxkay]

For all the language wonks on my Friends list, another object lesson about the importance of punctuation:

Different interpretations of a comma end up costing a contractor 2.13 million dollars.

Comments

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

People who write laws, and contracts, need to understand the use of subordinate clauses, and phrases.

If you read the MGL it's full of this crap, to the point of being unintelligible. Sheesh. Still, that's a bit of a hit for stupid legalese. I wonder which poor intern who wrote the language will get fired? I wonder how long it'll be before contracts are written in HLML? (hypothetical lawyer markup language)

[freerange-snark.livejournal.com]

What I can't figure out is how the sentence would be punctuated differently to convey the meaning the losing party thought was intended. But then, I'm dangerously sleep-depped...

[londo.livejournal.com]

Perhaps I misunderstand it, but the ability to terminate at any time with one-year notice seems to render the five-year term totally irrelevant, and therefore is a suboptimal way to read the contract.

Of course, it's a suboptimal way to *write* it too.