There’s joy and celebrations in the streets of Maine as their Oxford Comma dispute is settled. Even Microsoft Word approves the new law! The missing comma only cost $5 million plus legal fees.
A quick follow up to our 2017 story about a legal dispute around the lack of an Oxford Comma.
- Oxford Comma in Word 2016 isn’t as good
- Oxford Comma differences between Word 2016 and earlier versions
- More on the Oxford Comma in Microsoft Word
The two parties have now settled their troubles, costing about $5 million.
Meantime the Maine legislature has fixed the originally, poorly punctuated, law which caused the problem in the first place. Their solution was to go crazy with the semi-colon key.
Maine Title 26 Section 664, 3 F as rendered in MS Word.
The law now uses eight semi-colons in the paragraph instead of the previous seven commas. You could argue that the new wording is an abuse of the semi-colon but at least it’s clear for lawyers and judges.
The most important question is … does Microsoft approve the new phrasing? Yes! Microsoft Word doesn’t have a single complaint, as you can see from the above image.
I’m sure the good people of Maine are relieved <g>.
