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Comment by leephillips | Hacker News Reader

This is crystal-clear to me. What's the problem?

By Contemporary Standard American English standards comma placements are strewn throughout the sentence with very little regard for clarity (removing a few would make it clearer), and the logical relation between clauses leaves something to be desired.

Are you proposing that the constitution be re-written for grammar every couple of decades?

No, but it isn't even clear that the Constitution obeyed perfectly the standards of spelling and grammar of "it's" day.

is it clear that there were any such standards?

Standards for comma usage weren't established until almost the end of the 19th century. Some people used breathing or personal stylistics to decide on comma use, but there certainly was no general expectation that it would follow grammatical construction or logic.

Compared to some other 18th century documents I've read, the US Constitution is downright spare with commas.

However, by the standards of English then in effect, it makes perfect sense. Part of the problem is that written English prior to the 1900s included a large element of (conscious or subconscious) verbalization of what was written.

Try reading the Constitution out loud, taking appropriate breaks at the punctuation. It becomes a lot easier to understand and read; most (but not all) of the ambiguity will disappear.

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.

The grammar rule is that you can remove a clause within the commas - so this becomes:

No Person except a natural born Citizen at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.

So unless you were born sometime before 1776 you aren't going to be hitting the campaign trail

You have a point there.

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