Musings of the Museless

In the second of an ongoing series of posts, I’d like to share with you, dear reader (singular), what boils my blood, what grinds my gears, what gets my goat.  Some may think I’m easy going but there are many things that get on my nerves.  And this is one of them.

I send and receive a number of emails over the run of the week.  Work email, IEEE email, social emails, responding to emails telling me how to enlarge things and get money from a dead guy’s Swiss bank account.  It’s all good.  I’m a big fan of email over actually talking to people.  But not all emails are created equally.  Not even emails written by the same person on the same day.  And some email habits really drive me nuts.  Maybe I’m old-school.  Let me share with you some of my email driven angst:

• Emails sent without subjects. I cringe everytime Gmail says (no subject) for the subject to an email I’ve received.  I don’t CARE if the email is a one-liner asking me about my weekend plans.  Or if you only email me on one topic, therefore there’s no need to explicitly state the subject.  I don’t care if you forgot.  The subject line is there to be filled in.  I like to know what’s inside.  I like to look back on the subject and determine what your email was about.  And usually, if I’m replying to a no-subject email, I fill one in.  You may not notice, but it makes me a little happier.
• Emails with more than one topic. I’m a bit… OCD about filing my email.  I love Gmail and how it allows me to tag one email with multiple labels.  But I’d prefer not to have to do that.  Personally, I’d prefer two separate emails with well-crafted subject lines.
• Emails not written coherently. It’s a informal form of communication, but it’s only communication if both parties are communicating.  If I can’t understand you, it’s not really communicating.  I’m not talking good grammar, or full sentences.  Re-read your email from the point of view of one who did not write it… can you understand what you are trying to get across?
• SPAM from myself. Do you get this?  It’s happening a lot on my school account.  And I’m not seeing a damn cent from it.  Argh.

That is all.

Ah-HA! I previously wrote on the contract dispute between Rogers and Aliant, and how a misplaced (or maybe intentionally placed by Aliant but overlooked by Rogers) comma means that Aliant has the right to terminate the lease Rogers has on thousands of telephone poles in New Brunswick.
Well now Rogers is hitting back – en francais. In this Globe and Mail story, they argue that the French version of the contract does not have the same punctuation and conveys the meaning they (Rogers) thought the contract said in the first place. The contract was originally created and then translated, but each contract was individually signed by both parties.

My thought – if the contracts say different things when they are supposed to be the same, wouldn’t BOTH now be declared void? My other thought – how the heck do lawyers sleep at night? :)

I’ve admitted in the past to being a sort of grammar fanatic (you may not get that from my posts though). I was thrilled by this Globe and Mail article today, ‘A basic rule of punctation’. For those of you who can’t get the story or aren’t interested in reading it, it can be summed up in the next few sentences. Rogers enteredinto a contract with Aliant to use their utility poles. Due to the placing of a comma, the contract is not early as lucrative as Rogers’ perceived it to be and will be out oodles of money.

I love it! Not one big business cheating another by use of grammar (which is how sme see the whole thing), but rather I love that a simple comma can hold such an important place. The clause of trouble is…

“The agreement “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.””

See, the combo of the two commas means that technically, the middle section (“and therefore… terms”) could be taken out of the sentence and it would not affect the overall meaning of the sentence – it’s just adding extra info. So that means the sentence could read…

“The 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 that means Aliant has every right to do what they’re doing. Rogers (or their lawyers) made the mistake of overlooking the second comma!