Everyday Interpreter ✍🏻

Everyday Interpreter ✍🏻

A Typo in the Declaration of Independence

What the document's past tells us about our future.

Josh Wood's avatar
Josh Wood
Aug 06, 2026
∙ Paid

Have you ever noticed that the Declaration of Independence says our rights are “unalienable”?

Did you know that’s not how it was written?

Thomas Jefferson wrote it with an i: inalienable. But the u version showed up in the printer’s copy on the night of July 4th, it’s the one on the signed parchment, and it’s the one that stuck. Nobody knows for certain w…

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