[governsleastgovernsbest]

I was aiming for a light-hearted suggestion that they were digging themselves a deeper hole by using a term, "verbiage", that could be construed as describing the Pledge as wordy.

Other than that, I wouldn't blow the whole matter out of proportion, but agree with those who suggest that they would have been better off handling the presentation differently. "One Nation Indivisible" might have been better than the use of the ellipsis.

[RonDog]

Other than that, I wouldn't blow the whole matter out of proportion, but agree with those who suggest that they would have been better off handling the presentation differently. "One Nation Indivisible" might have been better than the use of the ellipsis.

I see. Good analysis.

When they truncate it from:

"One Nation, Under God, Indivisible"
to
"One Nation...Indivisible"

using an ellipsis, it implies that God is "unnecessary," (sort of lost "in the dots") since the PRIMARY definition for "ellipsis" is "omission of a word or phrase necessary for a complete syntactical construction but not necessary for understanding."

OTOH, I think that we may be reading TOO MUCH into this. Still, it reminds me of the old story about living your life in "The Dash," from

http://www.lindaslyrics.com/The%20Dash%20Poem.html