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The Importance of Being EditedAugust 09, 2006 The lede: "It could be the most costly piece of punctuation in Canada." It's a copyeditor's dream, comparable to reaching the top of Mount Everest, winning a gold medal in the Olympics, scoring a six-figure advance from a skinflint conglomerate publisher. The story appeared in Monday's Globe and Mail (Toronto). It continues: "A grammatical blunder may force Rogers Communications Inc. to pay an extra $2.13-million to use utility poles in the Maritimes after the placement of a comma in a contract permitted the deal's cancellation." (Those are Canadian dollars, but it's still a helluva lot more money than I'll see in my lifetime.) Here's the costly comma in context: The agreement between Rogers Communications Inc. and Aliant Inc. to string Rogers's cable lines across thousands of Aliant-managed utility poles for an annual fee of CAN$9.60 per pole "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."
Early last year Aliant cancelled the contract and said rates were going up. Rogers contended that the rate it had agreed to was locked in for five years. The CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission) ruled in favor of Aliant, on the basis of a crucial comma: the one following "terms." Aliant argues, and the CRTC agrees, that this comma makes "and thereafter for successive five year terms" in effect parenthetical. So the basic agreement "shall continue in force for a period of five years from the date it is made unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party (and thereafter for successive five year terms)." Which interpretation gives Aliant the right to cancel at any time with the required one year's notice. Rogers believed that the right to cancel didn't kick in till the "successive five year terms" started. According to conventions currently observed in Canadian and U.S. English, Aliant and the CRTC are right. That's why the copyeditors are crowing: "See? If Rogers had hired me I could have told them not to sign until that comma was removed!" And presumably, having saved Rogers CAN$2.13 million, we could argue for an increase in our measly hourly rate. Copyediting is poorly compensated because the people who devise the pay scales generally believe that copyediting is a largely a matter of dotting i's and crossing t's -- the kind of shit their English teachers humiliated them for not knowing how to do in sixth grade. That's why visions of raises and respect are dancing in some copyeditors' heads when they read that story. Not mine, however. I concede Aliant and the CRTC the point, but I ask at the same time, "Are you weasels or what? Didn't you guys and Rogers discuss this thing thoroughly? Y'all must have known what you were agreeing to. If someone snuck a comma in there then hoped against hope that Rogers's lawyers wouldn't notice -- shame, shame, shame!" A competent copyeditor might have queried the comma -- if she'd been in on the negotiations and knew what the two parties had actually agreed to. But such heroic action is not integral to the copyeditor's job, any more than it is to that of, say, the convenience-store clerk who saves a customer's life by performing the Heimlich maneuver. It's great when it happens, but it's still above and beyond the call. Nevertheless, I bet hundreds or even thousands of copyeditors have printed out the Globe and Mail story or forwarded it all over cyberspace, with the idea of persuading their bosses, their clients, and themselves that good copyediting is worth $2.13 million.
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