Proofreading Thomas Jefferson: could a stray period in the Declaration of Independence change the meaning of American democracy?

• Author: Majerol, Veronica
• Position: NATIONAL - Critical essay

A yellowed parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence sits in a bulletproof case at the National Archives in Washington, where it's viewed by more than a million visitors annually. It's considered the "official" version of the Declaration because it's the only one signed by Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and all the other members of the Continental Congress shortly after its adoption on July 4, 1776.

The parchment is so faded, though, that most people look to the transcript created by the National Archives for an accurate record of Jefferson's words.

But what if the transcript isn't accurate?

Professor Danielle Allen says the transcript contains a punctuation error smack in the middle of the world-famous second paragraph, the one that begins: "We hold these truths to be self-evident." She says the period that follows the phrase "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" was almost definitely a comma in the 1776 parchment version (see "Punctuation Problem").

Allen is a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. She arrived at her theory while doing research for her book Our Declaration. She found that the period was absent in the manuscripts of the Declaration created by Jefferson, in the one John Adams copied by hand, as well as in two versions commissioned by the Continental Congress. If the parchment at the National Archives were legible, Allen says, there's little chance its text would contain the period.

But even if the period is wrong, does it make any difference?

With the period, Allen argues, Jefferson's list of "self-evident truths" appears to stop at "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

"The period teaches people that that's the end of the thought," says Allen, "and then you're starting a new one."

But with a comma, it becomes clear that the phrases that follow--about the role of government in securing the people's rights--are part of the same sentence and were just as important to Jefferson as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

"You lose that connection when the period gets added," she says.

Finding out what's in the parchment copy is more than just an academic exercise, according to Allen. It could have real implications in the more than two-century-old political debate about the value and role of government in American life.

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