Today, Americans are celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. In last week's column, I briefly recounted part of the story behind the writing and editing of that document. As a longtime writer and former newspaper copy editor, I find both of these processes fascinating beyond words (so to speak), but I know that most people do not share my passion for punctuation and participles. Before you ditch this column and move on to YouTube for some pet monkeyshines, let me try to hook you with this line from Mark Twain--because, after all, you can't go wrong with Twain:
"Use the right word, not its second cousin."
Are you still there? Did that line grab/intrigue/arrest/tantalize you? What Twain was getting at with this piece of advice from his essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" is the concept of diction, or choice of words. As you can imagine, diction matters a great deal to writers and editors, but it should matter to everyone else, as well. After all, we all care about things, such as rights and liberty, and words are some of the best tools we have for talking and writing about those things. Whether we are producing or consuming language, we should pay close attention to words.
In that spirit, let's take a close look at a few of the key words we find in the Declaration of Independence.
Two interesting choices can be found in the first sentence:
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
There's nothing particularly fancy about the word "necessary," but its denotation, or literal meaning, is key to reading this famous sentence. It conveys that the colonies, in breaking with Great Britain, were not indulging in a mere wish or preference, but doing something that was "required," "inescapable," or "unavoidable" (all words used in the entry in Merriam-Webster's online dictionary). The word helps to build credibility for the colonists' cause, as does the word "impel" near the end of the sentence. Both essentially say, "Don't blame us for this move; we had to make it" or perhaps "This move was the natural consequence of something else."
By the way, it may be coincidence, but this aspect of the Declaration of Independence reminds me of a line from Of Plimoth Plantation, where William Bradford discusses, among other things, the reasons for the Pilgrims' departure from Europe and "remoovall to some other place"--that is, North America. Bradford wrote that the Pilgrims decided to leave "Not out of any newfanglednes, or other such like giddie humor, by which men are oftentimes transported to their great hurt & danger, but for sundrie weightie & solid reasons . . . ." (As you can see here, spelling has changed a bit since the early seventeenth century--ooh, there's a juicy topic for a future column!) Just as Bradford made a case that the Pilgrims left for "weightie & solid reasons" and not out of "newfanglednes," the Declaration makes the case that the colonies broke with England out of necessity and that there were "causes" that impelled them to make the break.
An even more famous sentence, the first in the second paragraph, contains another interesting example of strategic diction:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
As I noted in last week's column, we have Franklin to thank for "self-evident." (Jefferson had written "sacred & undeniable.") This is a fascinating choice. If you can put aside our familiarity with "self-evident" as part of a very famous sentence, you might agree with me that "sacred & undeniable" has a more poetic ring to it than "self-evident," but Franklin's suggestion packs a powerful punch. "Self-evident" conveys the notion that the truths are so plain, perhaps even so natural and rational, that they should not have to be justified. It's a masterful stroke from a masterful rhetorician. Of course, the reader doesn't have to agree with the statement, but the statement makes a bold assertion and challenges the reader to question it.
In this same sentence, "Rights" is a key word, as well, since it indicates that "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" are not negotiable: everyone deserves them and should not have to earn or justify them. (One of the senses in Merriam-Webster's entry for "right" is "something to which one has a just claim.")
I could go on like this for much longer than most of you would like, so let me take just one more word. It appears in this sentence:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Do you see a word that seems out of place--or, perhaps I should say, out of time? I'm thinking of the word "hath," which once was the third-person singular form of the verb have. Today, we would say "has." Here's the thing, though: even in Jefferson and Franklin's day, most English speakers were saying "has," not "hath." The latter had largely died out by the late eighteenth century. (Language change, there's another topic for a future column.)
How did an archaic verb form find its way into the Declaration of Independence? I can't say for certain, but I have a pretty good idea. You might, too, if you think of the two places where you may have encountered "hath": the King James Bible and Shakespeare's plays, both from about 160 years earlier. By the late eighteenth century, Shakespeare had begun to assume his place among the world's greatest writers, and the King James Bible carried even more authority as a work both beautifully written and conventionally invested with profound spiritual significance. Using "hath" instead of "has" in the Declaration of Independence adds an air of eloquence, poetry, spirituality, and righteousness to the document, enhancing its impact and boosting its credibility. In fact, for similar reasons, poets continued using archaic forms such as "hath" long after they had largely disappeared from ordinary speech. Consider this stanza from "Ode to a Nightingale," which John Keats wrote decades after Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence:
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Along with "hath," "wast" and "thee" are throwbacks to an earlier era of English.
There's more to diction than I have touched on here. Register, or the level of formality, is another fascinating aspect of diction, for example. I suspect we will come back to diction in a future column, but for now it's worth noting that it mattered to Jefferson and Franklin, and it should matter to us.
Appreciate the reminder that words matter, Mark! I nudge my teammates to improve their business writing as much for better clarity of meaning as for conciseness. “Less is more” can be challenging; however, avoiding a messy word salad is both welcomed and appreciated by most readers.