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Errors in the United States Constitution
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There are several apparent spelling and grammatical errors in the United States Constitution — both the original articles and the Bill of Rights. Errors of these kind are not uncommon in documents created and edited by hand. Since the Constitution is the supreme law of the United States, however, they have attracted some attention. Original document The use of spellings, such as defence and chuse, and the capitalization of most nouns could be mistaken for errors, but were simply the style when the Constitution was drafted. It's is used in Article 1, Section 10, where its should have been used. The spelling Pensylvania is used in the signature list at the bottom of the original Constitution. Elsewhere, in Article 1, Section 2, the normal spelling, Pennsylvania, is used. However, in the late 18th century, the use of a single "N" in Pennsylvania was not uncommon — the Liberty Bell's inscription, for example, uses a single "N". Bill of Rights Comma or smudge? A mark on the original, hand-written, Bill of Rights has been interpreted as either a comma or a smudge, and the difference may well be meaningful. The mark is found in the Takings Clause (eminent domain) of the Fifth Amendment: "...nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation." Different sources have quoted this phrase with and without the comma. In the it is not clear if there is a comma or a smudge. Careful examination of all the marks and punctuation in the document, as well as an analysis of the spaces between undisputed commas and their adjacent text, would indicate that if the "comma" in question is compared to all other punctuation it is so clearly atypical as to support the conclusion that it is simply a smudge or pen rest mark. Usage in popular culture * In The West Wing episode "Institutional Memory", Toby Ziegler says that he has discovered the comma.
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