A Missing Apostrophe In A Facebook Post Lands An Australian Man In A Defamation Court

Knowing your grammar is considered a mark of intelligence. But can not knowing it get you into trouble? Well, it did for a guy in Australia.

A real estate agent forgot to use an apostrophe in a Facebook post and that can cost him tens and thousands of dollars as a court ruled a defamation case against him.

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Anthony Zadravic, an agent based in the Central Coast of New South Wales, accused his former workplace and a man named Stuart Gunn of not paying retirement funds to all workers. He wrote it in a post on October 22.

At issue is the word ¡°employees¡± in the post, which read: ¡°Oh Stuart Gan!! Selling multi-million $ homes in Pearl Beach but can¡¯t pay his employees superannuation,¡± referring to Australia¡¯s retirement system, in which money is paid by employers into super accounts for employees. ¡°Shame on you Stuart!!! 2 yrs and still waiting!!!¡±

Less than 12 hours after the post was published Zadravic, who is based on the Central Coast in New South Wales, deleted it. But it was too late. Gan became aware of the message and filed a defamation claim against Zadravic.

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On Thursday, a judge in New South Wales ruled that the lack of an apostrophe on the word ¡°employees¡± could be read to suggest a ¡°systematic pattern of conduct¡± by Gan¡¯s agency rather than an accusation involving one employee. So she allowed the case to proceed.

Neither Zadravic¡¯s lawyers nor Gan immediately responded to requests for comment.

In matters of punctuation, social media is the Wild West. In some corners of the internet, careless grammar is highly tolerated ¡ª even a badge of honour. In legal matters, however, disputed punctuation can cost millions.

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Good time to be a grammar nazi, right?

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