Some judges recognise that punctuation does affect the meaning of text.
In this vein, it has been stated that to ignore the punctuation in a statute would be to ignore the intended meaning of the legislative drafters. Some judges have expressed their frustration over litigation that would not have occurred had punctuation been used in the document in question. Our responsibility as legal writers is to write in a way that is least open to misinterpretation. There is a long legal tradition that claims that punctuation-free writing is the most precise writing. Part of the history of this tradition can be traced to out-dated myths.