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Though few ever accused a proofreader of being a glory hound, the job was made famous during its prime in a 1950s NBC television series based on Adventures of Hiram Holliday, a series of stories by author Paul Gallico. A mild-mannered newspaper proofreader, Hiram Holliday, managed to save his newspaper, the fictitious New York Sentinel, by inserting what came to be known as the “$500,000 comma,” the amount Holliday’s correction later saved the publisher in a libel suit. When the original copy was exhumed and examined during the trial, it was found that no comma had existed there when the story first arrived at the copy desk, but that a large, fat, and pointed one had been inserted with a firm stroke of the pencil by the hand of Hiram Holliday,”  wrote Gallico in the first story. (Holliday is referred to as a “copyreader” in the books and as a “proofreader” in the television series.)

As a reward for his valuable contribution, the publisher gives Holliday a bonus of $8,000 and a month’s paid vacation. Holliday sets out to travel the world with Joel Smith, a reporter from the paper. Smith is instructed to file stories about their trip, and he hopes to make his name with a big scoop from abroad. Smith expects to take the lead, but it’s Holliday’s careful attention, meticulous nature, and encyclopedic knowledge of, well, everything, that inevitably saves Smith’s bacon in every episode.

In the first television episode alone, Holliday demonstrates a familiarity with the Chinese language and a vast amount of knowledge about the rare indigenous sea cucumber. He later disarms a bomb and details the trials of its developer, defeats two villains in a swordfight armed only with his trusty umbrella, and also displays admirable dancing skills. Portrayed by Wally Cox of Mr. Peepers fame, Holliday dresses in plain black suits and speaks with a slightly nasal tone that matches his Coke- bottle glasses and skeletal frame. You half expect him to die from a common cold, only to suddenly see him thwarting Nazis in the name of a distressed princess, or saving the entire American naval fleet while searching for the lost consonant of the Hawaiian Islands.
Many a proofreader was a hero, thanks to his or her careful eye and unique knowledge base, but Gallico and NBC managed to create one that America and then Britain watched, beginning in 1956 .

The $500,000 comma that launched Holliday’s adventure remained a work of fiction and drama until 2006, when Garlic’s plot construction made its way into the press. This time, however the story was real. That year, two major Canadian telecommunications companies appealed to government regulators over a contract dispute that centered on, yes, a single comma. Unlike Holliday’s comma, this one was worth just over $2 million in Canadian funds. The Globe and Mail, which broke the story in August 2006, noted, “It could be the most costly piece of punctuation in Canada.”

One company thought it had locked the other into a five-year deal. But a misplaced comma allowed the other party to slip out sooner. The contract stated that 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.” According to regulators (and language buffs), the placement of the second comma in the sentence enabled the contract to be cancelled  at any time upon one year’s written notice. This was supposed to apply only after the initial five-year deal.

Excerpted from page 272-274 of ‘Regret the Error’ by Craig Silverman