The words in the Book of Helaman are inspired. Written by men who knew God, the words are powerful. Translated into English nearly 200 years ago by Joseph Smith, those words have touched the hearts of literally millions of people.
        Still, as the English language has changed over centuries, the meaning attached to some of those words has shifted. Similarly, the way people speak, their sentence structures and word choices have also changed with the passage of time.
        We believe that our Father in Heaven speaks to us in our own language (2 Nephi 31:3) and we want to help others hear his words. So, motivated by the two desires to strictly adhere to the meaning of the text and help readers see themselves in the words and stories of this powerful book, some changes to the text have been made to make the message clearer in today’s English. These changes include the following:

• Phrases like “it came to pass” have been removed and verbs have been updated to reflect modern language and idioms (e.g. saith → said; cast into prison → thrown into prison; did flee → fled).
• Archaic phrasing has been modernized (e.g. they came down again that they might pitch battle → they marched down again to attack).
• Punctuation and paragraph breaks have been modified. For example, quotation marks have been used when people are quoted.
• Rather than incorporate Elder Orson Pratt’s revised chapter breaks used in today’s standard Latter-day Saint edition, we have used the chapter breaks as found in Mormon’s original edition of the Book of Helaman.