From Old-Fashioned Legalese Lawyer-Language to Current-Day Average-Citizen Language

The Problem: Ancient Language

There is a big problem today in the US. Many folks don't have a good understanding of what is in our founding documents. Also, as time goes on, many of our citizens are becoming less familiar with the hundreds-of-years-old language.

This is very sad to me. For a few decades I have considered it important, on the 4th of July, to read as much as I can of our founding documents. Also, for decades I have been eager to see the language of those documents updated for our modern language.

It will be a very sad day when corruption convinces citizens these documents don't exist, or mis-interpret the language because it's archaic and no longer used by regular folks.

Some folks think this has already happened.

At the bottom of this page are links to the documents I have begun updating.

Updating the Language

I am eager to see as many people as possible try to update the language of these documents: people thinking by themselves, as well as neighborhoods and classrooms, even prisoners.

I think getting the documents officially updated is... well, I'll just say it will be an act of Congress. I'm not sure that's even the "best thing;" I think our fellow citizens' minds is where the updated version needs to be, to that end I have begun placing our founding documents in a program that allows for easy editing and updating.

I am a fan of OmniOutliner Pro so this is where I edit. However, I have also exported the files in a few other formats.

If you just want to see the current state of my updates, you can. There is a link for DHTML, using that option you can read with your browser, and not need a specialized program. For now it's a manual process for me to put these online, and also, I am a regular person, this is a hobby; so don't expect daily updates. :-)

Inviting You

If you do not use Apple's Mac OS X, I will provide the text in other formats, so you can import it into other programs if you like. The layout I have in OmniOutliner Pro is this, there are two columns. One column holds the original text, and the other holds my updated version. Each paragraph is one cell in a row; this facilitates keeping each versions multiple paragraphs next to each other. See the screen shot below.

The screen shot below is a PNG graphic, a publicly documented standard for well over 1 decade. It's possible the monopolist's web browser will not display it.

It's possible you do not like my updated language of these documents. Oh well. I highly suggest you update them for yourself! :-)

Unfortunately, for the time being I don't have the resources to run a wiki, but would suggest that for the intrepid updater who wants to make it an even more public affair.