In the March 1992 newsletter of Australia’s Society of Editors, John Bangsund offered a rule that he called Muphry’s Law:

(a) if you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written;
(b) if an author thanks you in a book for your editing or proofreading, there will be mistakes in the book;
(c) the stronger the sentiment expressed in (a) and (b), the greater the fault;
(d) any book devoted to editing or style will be internally inconsistent.

In November 2003, the Canberra Editor noted, “Muphry’s Law also dictates that, if a mistake is as plain as the nose on your face, everyone can see it but you. Your readers will always notice errors in a title, in headings, in the first paragraph of anything, and in the top lines of a new page. These are the very places where authors, editors and proofreaders are most likely to make mistakes.”

Earlier, editor Joseph A. Umhoefer had observed that “Articles on writing are themselves badly written.” A correspondent wrote that Umhoefer “was probably the first to phrase it so publicly; however, many others must have thought of it long ago.”

In 2014, three truck drivers sued Oakhurst Dairy of Portland, Maine, alleging that they’d been unfairly denied four years’ worth of overtime pay. Maine law generally required time-and-a-half pay for each hour worked above 40 hours, but it listed exemptions for:

The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:

(1) Agricultural produce;

(2) Meat and fish products; and

(3) Perishable foods.

That’s not quite clear. Does the law exempt the distribution of the three categories listed, or does it exempt packing for shipment or distribution of them? The confusion shows the value of the so-called Oxford comma, the often-skipped comma that follows the next-to-last item in a series, as in “A, B, and C.” A comma after “shipment” would have eliminated the ambiguity in the language above; the drivers’ lawyer said, “That comma would have sunk our ship.” But without the comma, the court ruled, the meaning is uncertain, and the dairy had to pay the drivers $5 million.

In 2017 the state legislature replaced the troublesome passage with this:

The canning; processing; preserving; freezing; drying; marketing; storing; packing for shipment; or distributing of:

(1) Agricultural produce;

(2) Meat and fish products; and

(3) Perishable foods.

The New York Times wrote, “So now we get to replace Oxford comma pedantry with semicolon pedantry.”

See Details.

(Thanks, Edward.)

Some words become famous for their implausibly specific definitions:

ucalegon: a neighbor whose house is on fire
nosarian: one who argues that there is no limit to the possible largeness of a nose
undoctor: to make unlike a doctor

Mrs. Byrne’s Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure, and Preposterous Words, by Josefa Heifetz Byrne, collects examples ranging from atpatruus (“a great-grandfather’s grandfather’s brother”) to zumbooruk (“a small cannon fired from the back of a camel”). My own favorite is groak, “to watch people silently while they’re eating, hoping they will ask you to join them.”

Alas, most of these don’t appear in the magisterial Oxford English Dictionary. Accordingly, in 1981 Jeff Grant burrowed his way into the OED in a deliberate search for obscure words. When he reached the end of A he sent his 10 favorite finds to the British magazine Logophile:

acersecomic: one whose hair was never cut
acroteriasm: the act of cutting off the extreme parts of the body, when putrefied, with a saw
alerion: an eagle without beak or feet
all-flower-water: cow’s urine, as a remedy
ambilevous: left-handed on both sides
amphisbaenous: walking equally in opposite directions
andabatarian: struggling while blindfolded
anemocracy: government by wind
artolatry: the worship of bread
autocoprophagous: eating one’s own dung

“I have been working slowly through ‘B’ and so far my favourite is definitely ‘bangstry’, defined as ‘masterful violence’, an obsolete term that is surely overdue for a comeback.”

(From Word Ways, November 1981.)