US Constitution: how a bill becomes law

This is the veto clause. A bill goes to the president, who signs it or returns it with objections to the chamber where it began. Congress can still pass the bill over those objections with two-thirds in each chamber. George Washington returned only two bills in eight years.

Where this text comes fromThe clause is written as a procedure, step following step in the order the steps happen, and it never once explains why. A bill passes, it goes to one person, that person signs it or sends it back with reasons attached, and what happens next depends on a count. Reading it as an instruction rather than as prose makes the syntax straightforward, because every clause is a branch. That is unusual in the document and it is why this passage is quoted in civics classes more often than it is read as English.

What you might not noticeThe whole procedure runs as one sentence of sixty-nine words with a colon in the middle, so the return of a bill and everything that follows from it are grammatically part of the same statement. Source

What it trainsThirteen capitals in 382 characters and twelve of them fall inside the sentence, on the institutional nouns the drafters thought deserved one. Seven commas and a single colon are the only division across sixty-nine words. The longest word, Representatives, runs fifteen letters and carries a capital, so it needs Shift and then fourteen letters typed without a rhythm to lean on. It appears where the sentence is still establishing its subject.

Read the full text at the publisher: Wikisource