Punctuate that sentence
Toolbox
Published: December 5, 2009
Editors pay attention to punctuation because its their job But now officials at Rutland City Hall have discovered the havoc that a lack of punctuation can cause What a good lesson It turns out that a glitch in software or maybe it was the scanner used for city land records was leaving out punctuation It was also leaving out the dots on the letter i which we cannot duplicate in this editorial though we would if we could Over the past three years no one seemed to notice the omission But then a lawyer spoke up After all land records have to be exact Who wants confusion when it comes to property ownership Nobody Except maybe lawyers
The punctuation glitch has created headaches for City Clerk Henry Heck and others at City Hall who have worked to duplicate flawed records They have also stopped using the offending software The software company says the software is not the problem Rather the problem is with a scanner that has failed to pick up periods commas and those pesky dots Heck is worried that missing decimals could create confusion for example when a parcel of two and two tenths acres appears to be 22 acres Hes lucky hes not trying to do math It wouldnt work to calculate pi as 31416 would it
Editors sometimes wonder whether anyone appreciates the obsessiveness they manifest about the appropriate use of commas semi colons and other forms of punctuation Does anyone care Henry Heck and his helpers have probably gained a new appreciation for the importance of clarity and the ways those tiny specks of ink make everything easier for everyone How could they not have
Readers too may realize that a question without a question mark or an exclamation without an exclamation mark not to mention a parenthetical phrase without parentheses may create a vague unease as if somethings missing More exotic forms of punctuation the long dash for example or the elipsis never mind You get the point Don t you
33