What started out as small judicial order in a small case has become a widely traveled news item in the media and across the Internet. The story concerns a federal judge in Orlando who was having a hard time resolving a discovery dispute. He ordered the attorneys to go out and settle in themselves over a game of rock, paper, scissors.



Websites and newspapers across America and in Europe reported the incident as one of those cutesy innocuous stories you see sometimes. Even Judged mentioned it yesterday. The Volokh Conspiracy (www.volokh.com) put the story in perspective, analyzing the arbitrary nature of some judicial decisions. Volokh mentioned the case of a Michigan judge who was censured for being unable to render a verdict without the aid of a coin toss.





This all begs the grammatical question, what is the correct way to punctuate rock, paper, scissors? Volokh skirts the issue by using the more cosmopolitan name roshambo… but other sources call it rock/paper/scissors, rock-paper-scissors and even the unrefined rock paper scissors. The jury, it seems, is still out on that one.