Rewriting the Declaration of Independence using only the 1000 most common words

25 Jan 2013

I’ve rewritten the introduction to the US Declaration of Independence using the “Up Goer Five” text editor that only allows the 1000 most commonly used words (inspired by this new classic XKCD comic). Here you go:

When in the course of things that happen to humans one group of people needs to break away from being under the power of another group of people, and to take a full place next to all the other groups of people with power because the whole world and the big guy in the sky know they should have their own full place, they still have to explain to all the other groups of people why they want their own full place so bad.

It’s amazing how few words 1000 is. Lots of words I expect to be able to use (like country!) are unavailable. Still, I think this more or less gets the point across. But the absolute peak of the art form is Sherwin Siy’s take on “Ozymandias.”