Precise grammar is crucial only when writing official documents

Grammatical disputes can cause legal issues. One example is the case of a company in Maine that had to pay 5 million dollars because of a missing comma. A certain subsection dictating what professions should receive a certain amount of overtime pay in Maine’s laws states: “The overtime provision of this section does not include: The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of [foods]”. The ambiguity in this sentence is in the last item. It was unclear whether overtime should not be paid for just the people who packed foods for shipment or distribution, or for the people who packed foods for shipment AND the people who distributed the foods. The company believed the latter, and a few truck drivers the former. A lawsuit was charged against the company, and the company ended up having to pay their truck drivers a total 5 million dollars for their overtime wages. ^[1] Most American states now require the use of the Oxford comma (a comma placed in the second-last item of a list of things) in government documents to reduce lexical ambiguities. This shows the significance of having precise grammar in official documents - it changes the way cases are judged, which potentially affects many lives.