As for the comma before “and”, the story told about it back in the 1960′s was of a court interpreting a will that said, “My estate is to be divided equally between my sons John, Jim and Joe.” The court decided that this meant that it was first split between John and (Jim and Joe), 50% each. So John got 50% and his brothers 25% each.

The lesson I took away was that in a list of three or more, a comma before “and” is optional if you don’t care how others will interpret it.

There’s a typo in the Orwell’s List at the end.

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President….

then no president since Martin Van Buren has been “eligible.” And it’s all because of the comma after “citizen of the United States.” If the matter ever got that far, I suspect the Court would be quite comfortable in distinguishing what the Congress meant from what it said.

My first assumption on seeing a holster would be that the guy was an off-duty police officer, followed by thinking it was a normal person with a proper license, or some kind of bodyguard if with someone and wearing a suit. “Evildoer” would be pretty low on the list.

The contract said:

This agreement shall be effective from the date it is made and shall continue in force for a period of five (5) years from the date it is made, and thereafter for successive five (5) year terms, unless and until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.

Given the second comma (after “five (5) year terms”) the court ruled that the one year termination clause applied not just to renewals (as was almost certainly the intention) but to the original term. This allowed the counterparty to cancel the contract earlier than intended, costing Rogers C$1MM.

See this story from the NYT

Laura(southernxyl):
Dashes aren’t really proper written English.

Sez who?

I’d like to thank my parents, Jesus Christ and Ayn Rand, without whom this book could not have been written.

We could initiate Obama’s plan for extending school days and/or lengthening the school year, but it would have no impact. They aren’t taught to think, to spell, to discriminate. They are shown Al Gore’s movie and others that seek to impart a specific ideology. They are told what to think and not to question authority, the state’s view of history. That is, they are if they bother to show up after seeing the alternatives to an education that are provided “free” by the government, such things as housing, food, and the other “safety net” types of programs that are more addictive then heroin.

If Frost had meant “dark and deep” to describe is concept of “lively,” he would have been better off, as Neal Goldfarb points out, using a dash.

Dashes aren’t really proper written English.

Also, “the woods are lovely – dark and deep” sounds like he’s defining “lovely”. He was simply making the points that the woods are lovely, and further, that they are dark and deep.

…My daughter’s favorite example of punctuational disambiguity:

Woman, without her man, is nothing.

or

Woman! Without her, man is nothing!

…

[And what am I getting wrong here with the tag(s) for italics?]

Neurodoc, I think html has it in for you!

ChrisTS: I recall a case I read, long ago, in which a midwestern court. upheld someone’s acquittal of the offense of ‘knowingly receiving stolen goods.’ The defendant owned a pawn shop and had purchased an entire truckload of televisions with the serial numbers defaced. Because the legislation read so as to include ‘knowingly’ as an element of the offense, and because the state could not prove he ‘knew’ the goods were stolen, he got off. I believe this was regarded as the court’s thumbing its nose at incompetent legislators, not as something it had to do.

Does the “knowingly” really matter? Where would the mens rea be if there was no knowledge that the goods were stolen?

I recall a case I read, long ago, in which a midwestern court. upheld someone’s acquittal of the offense of ‘knowingly receiving stolen goods.’ The defendant owned a pawn shop and had purchased an entire truckload of televisions with the serial numbers defaced. Because the legislation read so as to include ‘knowingly’ as an element of the offense, and because the state could not prove he ‘knew’ the goods were stolen, he got off. I believe this was regarded as the court’s thumbing its nose at incompetent legislators, not as something it had to do.

How the heck else would you construe that?

The doctrine has been applied in several Supreme Court opinions in the last decade.

For the most humorous example, check out Barnhart v. Thomas, 540 U.S. 20, 27-28 (2003), in which Justice Scalia treats the reader to a colorful real life example.

“Consider, for example, the case of parents who, before leaving their teenage son alone in the house for the weekend, warn him, ‘You will be punished if you throw a party or engage in any other activity that damages the house.’ If the son nevertheless throws a party and is caught, he should hardly be able to avoid punishment by arguing that the house was not damaged. The parents proscribed (1) a party, and (2) any other activity that damages the house. As far as appears from what they said, their reasons for prohibiting the home-alone party may have had nothing to do with damage to the house-for instance, the risk that underage drinking or sexual activity would occur. And even if their only concern was to prevent damage, it does not follow from the fact that the same interest underlay both the specific and the general prohibition that proof of impairment of that interest is required for both. The parents, foreseeing that assessment of whether an activity had in fact ‘damaged’ the house could be disputed by their son, might have wished to preclude all argument by specifying and categorically prohibiting the one activity-hosting a party-that was most likely to cause damage and most likely to occur.”

If you’re curious about the doctrine, I have an article coming out in the fall issue of the Southwestern Law Review on the history of the doctrine’s application in the Supreme Court.

Poets have a lot more latitude in language than the rest of us.

I agree with others who commented that Frost meant the forest is lovely and dark and deep, not that it’s lovely because it’s dark and deep.

[And what am I getting wrong here with the tag(s) for italics?]

Commas always get students messed up and many adults.

When are we going to eat Dorothy?

Also, the extra comma messes up the scansion. At least to my ear.

It changes it, that’s for sure. But to my ear, it scans better with extra comma, and because of the pauses, slows the line down and underscores the deepness but, …

It may be that the comma was put in by a copy editor following the serial comma rule, but I find that unlikely. No copy editor is going to screw with a poem without asking. My bet is on the compositor (remember, this was in linotype days), who just supplied the comma in setting the type, which was a matter of typing the ms. in on one of those godawful great hulking machines. (I was at a printer once years ago and saw one of those things in action — scared the crap out of me, with bars of lead and stuff melting in a vat and what not. Jesus.)

35 USC 256:
Whenever through error a person is named in an issued patent as the inventor, or through error an inventor is not named in an issued patent and such error arose without any deceptive intention on his part, the Commissioner may, on application of all the parties and assignees, with proof of the facts and such other requirements as may be imposed, issue[] a certificate correcting such error.

35 USC 116:
Whenever through error a person is named in an application for patent as the inventor, or through error an inventor is not named in an application, and such error arose without any deceptive intention on his part, the Commissioner may permit the application to be amended accordingly, under such terms as he prescribes.

and they have to give effect to it.

I recall a case I read, long ago, in which a midwestern court. upheld someone’s acquittal of the offense of ‘knowingly receiving stolen goods.’ The defendant owned a pawn shop and had purchased an entire truckload of televisions with the serial numbers defaced. Because the legislation read so as to include ‘knowingly’ as an element of the offense, and because the state could not prove he ‘knew’ the goods were stolen, he got off. I believe this was regarded as the court’s thumbing its nose at incompetent legislators, not as something it had to do.

One more point: Ya gotta wonder whether the ambiguity wasn’t intentional.

So much discussion over the comma in the poem. If Frost had meant “dark and deep” to describe is concept of “lively,” he would have been better off, as Neal Goldfarb points out, using a dash. Then there would have been no question of a series at all.

Can it be suggested that maybe Frost was not such a good writer after all? What is the point of presenting readers with a word puzzle that interferes with their ability to understand the point sought to be made? (But, then, I am not much of a poetry fan.)

Neal Goldfarb: One more point: Ya gotta wonder whether the ambiguity wasn’t intentional.

Which ambiguity? :-)

The problem is that the practice of some in omitting the second comma creates the ambiguity. You have to guess which comma-practice camp the author is in. If everyone put in the second comma to indicate that a series consists of three items, then its omission would be understood to mean that there are only two items.

Exactly. Pity the poor panda.

I don’t read the original as simply a three-part series that doesn’t include an Oxford comma, and in which each item (lovely, dark, deep) modifies woods. Rather, I read dark and deep as referring to lovely (which would have been clearer if Frost had used a dash rather than a comma after lovely). In other words, the woods are lovely, and at least part of what makes them lovely is that they are dark and deep.

Here’s what it says on this point in Robert Frost: The Work of Knowing by Richard Poirier:

In fact, the woods are not, as the Lathem edition would have it (with its obtuse emendation of a comma after the second adjective in line 13), merely “lovely, dark, and deep.” Rather, as Frost in all the editions he supervised intended, they are “lovely, [i.e.] dark and deep”; the loveliness thereby partakes of the depth and darkness which make the woods so ominous.

On this interpretation, including the comma had a pretty big effect on the meaning, which I suspect is why David includes this example in his handout.

With the comma, we have a series of three words, each of which is about equal in weight. Without it, we have two descriptions to consider: “lovely”, and “dark and deep”. The difference is significant.

I agree. The problem is that the practice of some in omitting the second comma creates the ambiguity. You have to guess which comma-practice camp the author is in. If everyone put in the second comma to indicate that a series consists of three items, then its omission would be understood to mean that there are only two items.

–eats, shoots and leaves (you get to guess)

This cannot mean one verb and two nouns. I don’t see any ambiguity. The lack of Oxford comma is grating but not problematic.

Also, the extra comma messes up the scansion. At least to my ear.

In the poem yes. But otherwise (i.e., not in a poem), what is the objection?

With the comma, we have a series of three words, each of which is about equal in weight. Without it, we have two descriptions to consider: “lovely”, and “dark and deep”. The difference is significant.

Balls. Considering what the Court routinely makes up out of thin air, or at least deduces from amazingly subtle readings of the plain text of laws and the Constitution, the consistent and logical reading of an act, notwithstanding its misplaced commas, would be a very minor bit of “judicial activism,” and one actually justified by common sense.

Furthermore, your advice is poor. If everything matters, then practically speaking nothing does, or at best you have some chaos of time-varying and individual-varying priorities. No one has the time and resources to pay careful attention to every single word and punctuation mark he writes under every set of circumstances whatsoever. What students need is guidance in how to prioritize the demands their writing puts on their mental resources. You should have told them more about how to decide which words require more attention than others. They probably already understand that in the unlikely case they have nearly infinite time and energy, they should weigh each syllable and semicolon, but what they really need help with is how to allocate their time when it’s scarce.

Also, the extra comma messes up the scansion. At least to my ear.

In the poem yes. But otherwise (i.e., not in a poem), what is the objection?

troll_dc2: “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep” means something different from “The woods are lovely, dark and deep.”In the first quote, they are three things. In the second, they might be three if you subscribe to the idea that there should not be a comma before the “and” in a series, but it is also quite reasonable to believe that the writer meant that the words are lovely and also dark and deep, using the last two adjectives to create a single mood picture.
Using the comma avoids ambiguity, which is why I always use it. When you avoid ambiguity, you keep the reader from having to stop to try to figure out whether there are two things or three things. Sometimes it does not matter, but in a compound or otherwise complicated sentence, it most certainly can.

Also, the extra comma messes up the scansion. At least to my ear.