← The Book of Mormon, in modern American English
About this edition
A personal, opinionated reading edition of the Book of Mormon in modern American English — drafted from a written style guide and always presented beside the original text.
The story
I've read the Book of Mormon my whole life, and I love how it sounds. But I kept meeting people — my own kids among them — for whom the 1830s English was a wall between them and the story. Alma's counsel to his sons, Nephi's grief and grit, the Lord's own voice to a scattered people: it's all in there, and too many readers never get past "it came to pass."
So I made the edition I wished existed: the complete Book of Mormon in plain, warm, modern American English, in natural paragraphs — with every verse still aligned to the original text, one tap away, because the original is the point. This is a reading edition and a study aid, not a replacement.
To be clear: this is my personal project. It isn't published, endorsed, or reviewed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and for church classes, talks, and doctrine the official editions at churchofjesuschrist.org are the standard, full stop. But the Church has long taught that the word should reach people "after the manner of their language" (D&C 1:24), and its newest guidance warmly allows modern translations for personal Bible study. In that same spirit — as one member's offering — I hope this helps the book reach you. Read a chapter and see.
— Dan
About the name. This is the American Modern English Style (AMES) Edition. The acronym is a small play on words the author couldn't resist — it spells his own surname, Ames — but it's also honest: this is a personal, opinionated edition, and the name says so. The complete Nephi-to-Moroni text first shipped in August 2026, so the edition is no longer being filled in; it now iterates. Version 1.10 is current, and every chapter carries the version it shipped under.
Where this fits
For church use, the official editions govern. The General Handbook asks that Church settings use the Church's published scriptures, while noting that "Other Bible translations may also be used." That has long been the tone: the First Presidency's 1992 statement on the King James Version, which remains the Church's English Bible, acknowledged in the same breath that "other Bible versions may be easier to read."
The guidance revised in December 2025 goes further for personal study: members "can confidently gain insights from multiple translations" — several modern English Bibles are named — and the reasoning is grounded in the promise that the Lord speaks to people "after the manner of their language" (D&C 1:24). Plain language is not a concession; it is how the word is supposed to travel. The Church itself publishes a simplified-language retelling of the Book of Mormon for readers who need one.
This edition applies that spirit to personal study of the Book of Mormon. The side-by-side layout exists so the original always has the last word: tap any verse and the 1830-lineage text is right there, unchanged.
And now the caution, stated plainly. The guidance above concerns Bible translations and AI tools in general. None of it endorses modern renderings of the Book of Mormon, and none of it endorses this project. We cite it as context and spirit, never as authorization. For doctrine, for teaching, and for church settings, the official editions are the standard.
How it was made
The starting text is the public-domain 1830-lineage Book of Mormon — Project Gutenberg #17 — split into verses so nothing can quietly drift out of place. No text from the copyrighted modern LDS editions is used anywhere in this project.
Dan wrote the rules first: a style guide worked out by drafting sample chapters, marking them up by hand, and writing down the patterns — how narration should sound, how divine speech should sound, which words get modernized and which never do. Alongside it sits a Protected Phrase Registry: 32 phrasings kept verbatim across the whole edition.
The drafting itself is done with AI — Anthropic's Claude, run through Claude Code — working chapter by chapter from that rule set, with several rounds of automated review built into the process before a chapter is ever called done.
Then people read it. The drafting is scaffolding: an iterative process, working with human readers who check the text and suggest updates to the style guide, is what moves the edition toward its current version. As a live, active project, that process keeps going. You can help — read a chapter, and send feedback that can be factored into future versions of the style guide and text.
That shape — disclosed use of AI, a human accountable for every line, the machine doing research and editing support rather than the spiritual work — is the same shape as the Church's own published principles for artificial intelligence, which ask that such tools "support and not supplant" our connection with God and never replace "the gift of divine inspiration." Those principles govern the Church's own work, not this project; the resemblance is deliberate, but it is not an endorsement.
Versioning
Every chapter carries a version number, and it means something specific: the ruleset the chapter was drafted under. A chapter marked v1.10 was generated from the style guide and registry as they stood at that release. Whether Dan has yet read it under those rules is a separate fact.
The minor number bumps whenever the rules themselves change — a new rule written into the style guide, or an entry added, amended, or removed in the Protected Phrase Registry. Because the text is regenerated from those rules, a single rule change can improve thousands of verses at once, which is why rule changes, not verse edits, drive the version number.
The third number is the exception that proves the rule. Dan reads the edition chapter by chapter, and on a first read-through he sometimes changes a line by hand — a contraction, a tightened clause, a word with a warmer edge — where no rule change is behind it and none should be invented. Those chapters keep the ruleset they were generated under and take a patch bump instead: a chapter marked v1.10.1 is the ruleset 1.10 text plus Dan's own polish. A chapter still at.0 is the ruleset's unaided output. So the number tells you two things at once — which rules wrote the chapter, and whether Dan has since put his hand to it.
The edition-wide version shown on this site is simply the highest version among the chapters currently published, to the ruleset: v1.10. Patches don't move it, because what you cite is the ruleset.
The website itself is versioned separately, as site v1.10.15 in the footer. That number tracks the reading software — the views, the search, the typography — and moves when the site gains a feature or a fix. It says nothing about the words. When you cite this edition, the version you want is the edition version, v1.10.
License & citation
The original 1830-lineage Book of Mormon text is in the public domain (Project Gutenberg #17); no one owns it. This modern rendering is © 2026 Dan Ames and is shared under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 — you're welcome to reuse or adapt it for any purpose, including commercially, as long as you give credit and note any changes.
Ames, D.P., 2026, The Book of Mormon: American Modern English Style (AMES) Edition, v. 1.10, https://modernbookofmormon.com, accessed 8/23/2026.
Help make it better
If a verse reads wrong to you, a note on that single verse is welcome. But the most valuable feedback is a suggested change to the rules themselves. Because the whole edition is generated from this rule set, a good rule change can be applied from the first verse to the last in the next version — improving thousands of verses at once rather than one at a time. Rule-level feedback compounds. Suggest an improvement.
Accounts & privacy
You can read every word of this edition without an account, and most people should. Signing in does exactly three things: it lets you keep your own notes beside the text, it remembers where you left off so you can pick up on another device, and it counts the days you read.
Sign-in is through Google only, so there is no password here to lose or for anyone to steal. What gets stored is your name, your email address, your Google profile picture, the notes you write, your reading position, and the dates you read. Nothing else. There are no third-party trackers, no advertising, and your information is never sold or shared.
Your notes are private. They are not shown to other readers and there is no way to make them public.
Feedback you send through the suggestion form is stored so it can be read and acted on: your message, the passage it refers to, and whatever name or email you chose to give — all three optional. If you were signed in, it is linked to your account so Dan can tell two suggestions came from the same reader. Your IP address is not stored; a truncated one-way digest of it is, purely so a flood of spam can be recognised as coming from one source.
You can take your notes with you at any time — Export my notes in the account menu hands you the whole set as a file. And you can delete your account and everything attached to it from that same menu; it is removed outright, not archived.