Happy Fourth of July!
A few warnings:
This is a long one . . . I find it hard to restrain myself when writing about Abraham Lincoln. Wait until you have a chance to sit down with a glass of lemonade, and then dig in. I will be discussing the details of the manuscript tradition of the Gettysburg Address.
I’ve used the pretentious scholarly abbreviation “NB” throughout this newsletter for side notes about why I am making certain style decisions, like not italicizing the name of a prayer book and abbreviating a military title. Nota bene literally means “take careful note”; the capitals for the abbreviation “NB” are “illogical but often used for emphasis” (The Chicago Manual of Style [CMOS] 10.42).
To get us started, a personal story . . .
Shortly before Daniel and I got married, we sat around the table in my parents’ kitchen and argued for more than an hour about the placement of the punctuation in our wedding vows. I say “argument” in the sense of “lively, somewhat contentious but mostly agreeable discussion.”
Since I’m writing about this in a style, grammar, and usage newsletter, it’s not too surprising that neither of us has any regrets about the time spent discussing where the dashes and commas should go in the words that made us husband and wife. (My dad is still a bit traumatized by the kitchen-table argument about wedding-vow punctuation, though.)
But you might wonder why it was necessary to argue about the punctuation since wedding vows are, after all, spoken.
We wanted to know how all the elements of traditional vows (“for better, for worse” and so on) fit together in a complete, coherent sentence. We would know where the commas were even if no one else did! And while we were using traditional vows and could have just opted for whatever punctuation came with those vows, printed versions of traditional vows often are strangely lacking in punctuation.
For instance, from the Book of Common Prayer (NB: per CMOS 8.103, prayer books and scriptures don’t have italics):
In the Name of God, I, N., take you, N., to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until we are parted by death. This is my solemn vow.
“For better for worse”? Surely there should be a comma there. We were agreed on the need for additional punctuation—the question was just which punctuation marks should be used and where they should be placed.
Fortunately, we were able to come up with mutually agreeable punctuation for our vows, and on January 9, 2016, shortly after 10:30 a.m., I told Daniel:
In the presence of God and these witnesses, I, Rebekah, take you, Daniel, to be my wedded husband—to have and to hold from this day forward for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health; to love, comfort, honor, and cherish; forsaking all others and keeping myself only unto you—until death do us part or until the Lord shall call us home.
(NB: Maybe some other time I’ll discuss the use of “shall.” Suffice it to say now that “shall” is very much going out of fashion in the English language, and my feelings about that are complicated. See CMOS 5.131 for guidance regarding “shall” in the meantime. And the “until the Lord shall call us home” was our invention—to cover the possibility that we might not die before Jesus returns.)
Fast-forward more than seven years, and I was delighted to find that Abraham Lincoln, one of my heroes, devoted considerable effort to revising small details like punctuation in speeches delivered orally and afterward printed in newspapers, copied down for public or private consumption, etc. More than just wording changes were significant to him. He cared about every aspect and means of communicating via language.
As a copyeditor, I passionately believe that a person who wants to say something meaningful about big, complicated issues needs to also attend to small, seemingly insignificant matters. Every punctuation mark, along with every word, is an opportunity to persuade, to delight, to inform. Lincoln’s speeches and writings address complex topics, questions, and ideas of immense significance, from freedom to national identity and more. But, as we’ll see, he cared about comma placement too.
His most well-known speech, the Gettysburg Address, which he delivered on November 19, 1863, was meticulously crafted and subsequently revised (NB: that link is a helpful resource, but it does have some transcription errors). There are five known drafts in Lincoln’s handwriting.
In the first draft of the Gettysburg Address, known as the Nicolay copy (named after Lincoln’s secretary John G. Nicolay), the speech begins with this sentence:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal”
No period was inserted in this initial draft.
Library of Congress, Gettysburg Address, Nicolay Copy
By the second draft, the Hay copy (named after White House assistant John Hay), the opening sentence has undergone some cosmetic revisions: “liberty” is now capitalized (NB: I don’t love capitalizing important words for emphasis, but I’m not going to argue with America’s greatest president), the quotation marks for “all men are created equal” are dropped, and the sentence now has a period, which makes sense, as it’s a more polished draft.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Library of Congress, Gettysburg Address, Hay Copy
There is some scholarly debate about whether the Nicolay and Hay copies are both “pre-speech drafts.” Historian Martin P. Johnson believes that the Nicolay copy was the version of the speech that Lincoln gave and that the Hay copy was a “post-speech creation.”
On January 30, 1864, Edward Everett, the main orator at the Gettysburg cemetery dedication, wrote to Lincoln asking for a copy of the remarks Lincoln had made. The third draft of the speech, known as the Everett copy, was therefore definitively produced after Lincoln had already delivered the Gettysburg Address. When Lincoln sent him a copy on February 4, 1864, he deleted a comma in the opening sentence:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Gettysburg Address, Everett Copy
The fourth draft was sent by Lincoln on February 29, 1864, to historian George Bancroft, who wanted a copy to use in a fundraiser for soldiers. In the Bancroft copy, “upon” has changed to “on,” and the comma after “forth” has been reintroduced.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Cornell University Library, Division of Rare & Manuscript Collections, Gettysburg Address, Bancroft Copy
Because Lincoln wrote on both sides of the paper, the Bancroft version of the speech could not be engraved. So Bancroft asked for another copy, which is considered the fifth and final draft and is called the Bliss copy after Bancroft’s stepson Col. Alexander Bliss (NB: civil or military titles are abbreviated before a full name, but written out before a surname only [CMOS 10.13]). The Bliss copy is the version inscribed inside the Lincoln Memorial. This version was completed by March 1864—around four months after the delivery of the speech.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
That comma after “forth” was dropped.
Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Gettysburg Address, Bliss Copy
Draft 1: Nicolay
Draft 2: Hay
Draft 3: Everett
Draft 4: Bancroft
Draft 5: Bliss
In drafts 1, 2, and 4 there is a comma after “forth.” In drafts 3 and 5, there is not a comma after “forth.”
If you find it hard to believe that Lincoln purposely took the comma in and out of the speech, and instead attribute its variability to accident, according to Douglas L. Wilson’s Lincoln’s Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words, there are many instances of “the care Lincoln took with the details of a speech that had already been delivered and reported” (287). Wilson, a Lincoln scholar, says that Lincoln often “used commas to indicate pauses” (287). Perhaps he was undecided on whether a pause was necessary after “forth.”
Wilson believes that the comma insertion and deletion was a matter of conscious choice for Lincoln: “Whether there should be a comma after the word ‘forth’ in the first sentence [of the Gettysburg Address] is, in one regard, the point about which the author was most divided” (291).
In Wilson’s judgment, Lincoln’s revisions of the Gettysburg Address demonstrate “his attention to small differences in sound and rhythm, his concern for verbal resonance and texture, his seemingly tireless efforts to perfect his work in all his details” (293). I like to think Lincoln would have approved of Daniel and me wanting to know where the commas should go when we promised to stay united “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.”
With gratitude to have been brought forth in the nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,
Rebekah Slonim
P.S. If you want to know more about Lincoln’s revision process, I highly recommend Lincoln’s Sword.