Sounds like he tried to build an academic career on pathological grammar Nazism. The size of a dot? Come on, that's at most a minor typographical error.

A text the size of "Ulysses" cannot, by definition, ever be "perfect". There will always be an opportunity for a vacuous hack to assemble a "catastrophic" collection of minor mistakes that allegedly compromise the edition. This is usually much easier than actually producing a new edition, by orders of magnitude so, and this is why we hate grammar Nazis: they derail the conversation and in the end contribute nothing of substance.

I know it's probably harsh, but every field has these guys, they should not be celebrated but marginalized. I find his ouster from academia not surprising. Kidd is obviously very competent but he chose to invest his vast knowledge and intellect into an ego match instead of contributing and expanding his field.