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Pastimes : SI Grammar and Spelling Lab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Stan who wrote (4002)3/18/2007 7:18:16 PM
From: Tom Clarke  Respond to of 4710
 
3 Famous Commas

1. THE FATAL COMMA
Czarina Maria Fyodorovna once saved the life of a man by transposing a single comma in a warrant signed by her husband, Alexander III, which exiled a criminal to imprisonment and death in Siberia. On the bottom of the warrant the czar had written: `Pardon impossible, to be sent to Siberia.' The czarina changed the punctuation so that her husband's instructions read: `Pardon, impossible to be sent to Siberia.' The man was set free.

2. THE BLASPHEMOUS COMMA
In several editions of the King James Bible, Luke 23:32 is changed entirely by the absence of a comma. In the passage that describes the other men crucified with Christ, the erroneous editions read: `And there were also two other malefactors.' Instead of counting Christ as a malefactor, the passage should read: `And there were also two other, malefactors.'

3. THE MILLION-DOLLAR COMMA
The US government lost at least a million dollars through the slip of a comma. In the tariff act passed on June 6, 1872, a list of duty-free items included: `Fruit plants, tropical and semitropical'. A government clerk accidentally altered the line to read: `Fruit, plants tropical and semitropical'. Importers successfully contended that the passage, as written, exempted all tropical and semitropical plants from duty fees. This cost the US a fortune until May 9, 1874, when the passage was amended to plug the hole.

canongate.net



To: Stan who wrote (4002)7/9/2007 3:58:59 PM
From: TimF  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 4710
 
From an e-mail -

"They're know miss steaks in this newsletter cause we used special soft wear witch cheques you're spelling. It is mower or lass a weigh to verify. How ever is can knot correct arrows in punctuation ore usage: an it will not fined words witch are miss used butt spelled rite. Four example; a paragraph could have mini flaws but wood bee past by the spell checker. And it wont catch the sentence fragment which you. Their fore, the massage is that proofreading is knot eliminated, it is still berry much reek wired."