Wordprints and the Book of Mormon

Title

Wordprints and the Book of Mormon

Publication Type

Chart

Year of Publication

1999

Authors

Welch, John W. (Primary), and Welch, Greg (Primary)

Number

10-135

Publisher

Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies

City

Provo, UT

URL

https://byustudies.byu.edu/charts/10-135-wordprints-and-book-mormon

Terms of use

Items in the BMC Archive are made publicly available for non-commercial, private use. Inclusion within the BMC Archive does not imply endorsement. Items do not represent the official views of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or of Book of Mormon Central.

Bibliographic Citation

Abstract

Modern computers have given birth to a new science of analyzing word patterns in documents whose authorship is disputed. By wordprint analysis, it is now possible with a high degree of certainty to tell which suspected authors did not write a given work. Wordprinting is based on the somewhat surprising fact that every author that has been studied thus far subconsciously uses sixty-five identifiable patterns, involving words such as and, the, of, and that, at rates that, from a statistical standpoint, differ significantly from those of other authors. The higher the number of "rejections" or differences, the less likely it is that the tested samples were written by the same person. This chart shows the results of tests that were run by John L. Hilton, comparing writings of Nephi and Alma with the words of Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and Solomon Spaulding. In every set comparing the Book of Mormon texts against these three writers, at least seven (and often many more) rejections were measured. These results yield strong statistical evidence that the wordprints of Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, and Solomon Spaulding are not measurable in the Book of Mormon.

Authorship

Wordprints