Misspellings in the U.S. Constitution
The Constitution was written in 1787 in the manner of the day — in
other words, it was written by hand. According to the National
Archives, the version we are most familiar with today was penned by Jacob
Shallus, a clerk for the Pennsylvania State Assembly. In the document itself
are several words which are misspelled. Far from the days of spell checkers
and easy edits, these misspellings survive in the document today.
Only one, though, is a glaringly obvious mistake. In the list of signatories, the word “Pennsylvania” is
spelled with a single N: “Pensylvania.” This usage conflicts with a prior
spelling, at Article 1, Section 2. However,
the single N was common usage in the 18th century — the Liberty Bell, for
example, has the single N spelling inscribed upon it.
Another mistake, though less obvious, is a common one even today: the word
“it’s” is used in Article 1, Section 10, but the word “its” should have been
used.
The most common mistake, at least to modern eyes, is the word “choose,”
spelled “chuse” several times. This is less a mistake than it is an alternate
spelling used at the time. The word is found in the Constitution as both
“chuse” and “chusing.”
Finally, at that time, the American spelling of words was inconsistent at
best, and several words are spelled in the British manner. These words are
“defence,” “controul,” and “labour.” In America, we would today write these
words as “defense,” “control,” and “labor.”
Most of the misspellings are in the original document, which was written
hastily after the Convention concluded. Aside from one use of British spelling
in the Bill of Rights (“defence” in the 6th), the
amendments are all error-free. The authors of the latter amendments all had the
benefit of time to better proofread their work, and the benefit of a
standardized American dictionary.
New students of the Constitution often see one more thing that raises
eyebrows: the use of capital letters in the original text. Some have even gone
so far as to say that capitalized words in the original Constitution have some
sort of special significance above and beyond the non-capitalized words. This
is only true in that most of the non-standard capitalization is done to nouns.
Again, this was an issue of style, and is similar to the way German capitalizes
nouns — they are simply capitalized, and that’s all. The words “People”
and “State” have the exact same significance and meaning as “people” and
“state”. Many modern transcriptions of the Constitution remove this extra
capitalization without changing the meaning of the document.