Heads-up, sixth graders. Quit counting the ceiling tiles and pay attention when your English teacher tries to explain how to use commas, semi-colons, and periods.
For the rest of your lives, you may never – ever – write a sentence with a semi-colon in it. And, who knows, we may all be “communicating” in emojis in the next 10 years or so anyway.
Still, a need for the precise communication of ideas will continue, according to accepted rules and interpretations. Which is to say, the pesky semi-colon can still come back to bite you.
Take, for instance, laws and ordinances. And then ask a member of the Putnam County Board of Commissioners about the impact of a lil’ ole semi-colon.
The problem first arose a couple of years ago when Lauren and Josh Sprayberry were turned down for a permit to build a swimming pool on a narrow and sloping lot on Lake Oconee.
They had bought the lot in 2005 and built a home on it. Soil conditions had them place the house’s septic system in their front yard. However, building a swimming pool on the lakeside part of the lot would need a 35-foot variance from the county zoning ordinance’s setback requirement of 65 feet from the lake.
The Sprayberrys were turned down at every turn, including appeals going up every step of the judicial ladder – the county planning and zoning commission, the county commission, the county commission (again), and Superior Court Judge Brenda H. Trammell of the Ocmulgee Circuit.
The section of the county zoning ordinance dealing with the granting of variances contains three paragraphs. Here is paragraph one with the offending semi-colon (and “or”): “Where by reason of exceptional narrowness, shallowness or shape of a specific piece of property, which at the time of adoption of this chapter, was a lot or plat of record; or … That ”; or” became the focus of lawyers’ arguments.
Was that semi-colon meant to act like a period, signaling the completion of one of two separate choices? Or was it more like a comma, signaling the first paragraph as a part of a unified list of three requirements?
The second paragraph dealt with “practical difficulties” and “undue hardship … not the result of acts of the applicant.” Trammell upheld the county’s argument that the pool was a choice, not a hardship – and in effect, linking paragraphs one and two, with the semi-colon acting like a comma.
Last Friday, the commissioners emerged from an executive session with County Attorney Adam Nelson to announce that the state Court of Appeals had overturned Trammell’s ruling. In their nine-page ruling, a three-judge panel (Barnes, Doyle and Phipps) emphasized that zoning ordinances, citing a 2012 Haralson County junkyard case, “are to be strictly construed in favor of the property owner.”
In other words, a tie goes to the owner.
The commissioners also declared a three-month moratorium on granting any zoning variances while a portion of the county zoning ordinance undergoes a re-write by June 1.
The decision by the Court of Appeals panel even included a brief lecture on grammar, citing a 1998 Moultrie insurance policy case. “‘(A) statuary list divided by semicolons and concluding with ‘or’ is disjunctive rather than conjunctive.’ As this Court has stated in interpreting an insurance policy, ‘[p]unctuation is an important indicator of meaning.’ Even without a semicolon, ‘[t] he natural meaning of “or,” where used as a connective, is to mark an alternative and present choice, implying an election to do one of two things …’.”
Got that? Okay, class, back to counting ceiling tiles.