Bad punctuation can be as destructive as bombs! In his book The Queen’s English and How to use it Bernard C. Lamb tells a story as amusing as it is sad about how one missing comma can have devastating consequences.
Back in 1984 a station in East Lothian, Scotland, was wrongly demolished because a comma was missing from the British Rail planning document. The list of items to preserve should have read: ‘Retain Drem Station, bridge…’ Unfortunately for the station building, the comma after ‘Station’ was missing, the station was pulled down and had to be rebuilt. The bridge survived.
