John,

>How important is language? In conveyances of property, the presence of a comma can greatly alter one's legal standing with respect to a future interest in property.

So true. I had experience in an inheritance situation with the difference between furniture and furnishings. The will said furniture, although the other party was certain the intention was furniture and everything else in the house. Perhaps that was the intention, but know one could say for sure, so the literal wording prevailed. Thankfully, there was no need for an argument, since the local family lawyer gave the definitions and settled it for us.

As an editor, I can imagine there must be many cases of ambiguous sentence construction in legal documents.