In February of 1998, the Miami Dade county school board voted to change the rhythm with which their students recite the Pledge of Allegiance, the words American public-school children have chanted in salute of their country's flag since the late nineteenth century. More specifically, the school board agreed to eliminate the pause customarily made between one nation and under God. The story was broadcast on National Public Radio's Saturday morning weekend edition with Scott Simon, who invited his guest, U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky, to comment on the significance of the disappearing pause. Pinsky's first remark was to congratulate the Dade county school board for taking the issue of pauses and rhythm so seriously. (I, too, was impressed—punctuation was in the news!) Nevertheless, he disagreed with their decision, expressing a liking for the comma-sized pause which stresses that America is one nation, not one among many nations, invoking God in their oaths and pledges. For Pinsky, the pause signifies that the nation's indivisibility is the responsibility of its own inhabitants, not that of a divine will. In other words, under God becomes a kind of parenthetical avowal rather than a direct condition: one nation, under God, indivisible. According to Pinsky, the pause serves as a necessary reminder for American citizens of the racial tensions which once threatened to divide the country.

But what neither Simon nor Pinsky considered was the fact that the prepositional phrase under God was not part of the original pledge commemorating the four hundredth anniversary of Columbus's arrival in the New World, but a 1954 addition.