Human Rights Declaration, Articles 1 and 2

The General Assembly adopted the declaration in Paris on December 10, 1948, with forty-eight states in favor and eight abstaining. A drafting committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt worked on the text for two years. Article one puts dignity and reason first, and article two rules out distinctions of any kind. The declaration holds the record as the most translated document in the world.

Where this text comes fromThe declaration was written by a committee, which usually shows, and here it does not. Eight states abstained rather than vote against, among them South Africa and the Soviet bloc, so the document passed in Paris without a single opposing vote. The two articles you copy are the foundation the other twenty-eight rest on: one asserts that dignity and reason come with being born, the other closes every door through which a distinction might be smuggled back in. The edition linked below carries the full English text as adopted.

What you might not noticeThe list of forbidden grounds in article two spells colour the British way, and it runs to nine items before the sentence closes, from race at the front to birth or other status at the end. Source

What it trainsTen commas in 431 characters and only five capital letters, so most of this is plain letter work. One digit interrupts it: the heading Article 2 runs straight on inside the third sentence, with no line break to warn you, so the hand goes up to the number row once and comes back down. That third sentence then carries eight of the ten commas in one list of grounds, forty-one words without a full stop. Three sentences average twenty-four words and sit in the same flat register, which is where attention slips. Three words tie for longest at eleven letters: brotherhood, which closes the second sentence, then Declaration and distinction in the third.

Read the full text at the publisher: Wikisource