A few years ago I went through a BoM and crossed out all of the words that didn't add to the book at all. A lot of "and it came to pass"es and little words like "did" and "even" and "exceedingly" that impede the flow of the book without adding any real content. I only did it in a paper copy of the BoM, with the first few chapters of First Nephi, but I ended up cutting about a third of the words within that section. (!) To me, this makes the BoM seem like someone had written it from whole cloth and padded it with superfluous words to make the book seem more impressive, since the Bible isn't like that. It reminds me of what I used to do in English class to meet a specified word count.

I don't know if anyone has made an Abridged Book of Mormon before. I might give it a go. Just for fun, I edited out almost all instances of the phrase "...it came to pass that..." from a txt file of the BoM, and it reduced the word count from 269551 to 262893. That's almost a 2.5% reduction!

You can see the "came-to-pass"-less version here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9aVNkzJTHafbW02YkVVMXNDam8
/view

By the way, does anyone know what happened to the old New Order Mormon forum?

What I'd like is a "Cliff's Notes" pamphlet: something that summarizes the story line, then gives plain-vanilla character summaries and story analysis. Plus a few critical essays at the back.

Book of Mormon--Condensed version--

I, Nephi, cut off a head, got seasick, and died. My evil nephews turned dark and made war. I copied Isaiah, incorporated some 19th Century Americana, and quoted Shakespeare in a language that never existed. My relative, Alma the Younger, was a wanker who quit wanking. Jesus came, taught, and made a good impression for a few years. Soon, everybody started wanking again and got killed--except for those who wanked less than the others.

now you're just making mormonism look silly.

Yeah, the Reader's Digest version.

For some practical examples of wordiness, see my article "Linguistic Problems in Mormonism" at http://packham.n4m.org/linguist.htm#ENGRAVED and scroll down to the paragraph titled "Wordiness"

See also the listing of "editing on the fly" passages in the BoM at http://packham.n4m.org/inotherwords.htm

As a Spanish major in school, I had to take a few classes in linguistics, but your material is over and beyond anything I ever learned. I LOVE reading your articles about linguistics!!!

Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Fascinating stuff!

My version would be a simplified pictorial. It would have a single sheet of toilet paper with a giant shit smeared across it.