Wordcraft Home Page    Wordcraft Community Home Page    Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  The Written Word    The Crucial Comma
Go
New
Find
Notify
Tools
Reply
  
The Crucial Comma Login/Join
 
Member
posted
It's amazing the things you sometimes find on line while looking for other things ...

This, found on a site, appears to be taken verbatim from The Book of Lists by David Wallechinsky & Amy Wallace. I'll parcel out their second and third examples in the next few days. Perhaps some of us have further real-world examples?
    Czarina Maria Fyodorovna once saved the life of a man by transposing a single comma in a warrant signed by her husband, Alexander III, which exiled a criminal to imprisonment and death in Siberia.

    On the bottom of the warrant the czar had written: `Pardon impossible, to be sent to Siberia.'

    The czarina changed the punctuation so that her husband's instructions read: `Pardon, impossible to be sent to Siberia.'

    The man was set free.
 
Posts: 1184Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of Kalleh
posted Hide Post
Wow! That is great...much like "Eats, Shoots & Leaves."
 
Posts: 24735 | Location: Chicago, USAReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of BobHale
posted Hide Post
While I find this plausible and funny, I suspect it of being apocryphal. (See also A language hoax.)


"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." Samuel Johnson.
 
Posts: 9421 | Location: EnglandReply With QuoteReport This Post
Member
Picture of arnie
posted Hide Post
Here is the page from The Book of Lists with the comma story. That doesn't make it true, though!


Build a man a fire and he's warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
 
Posts: 10940 | Location: LondonReply With QuoteReport This Post
  Powered by Social Strata  
 

Wordcraft Home Page    Wordcraft Community Home Page    Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  The Written Word    The Crucial Comma

Copyright © 2002-12