“Significantly, this is the only place in the Book of Mormon where the word ‘market’ appears.
“ … Why add this description? If Joseph Smith were authoring the book, there would be no need to include such a description … .
“We can, however, draw several conclusions from Mormon’s inclusion of the phrase ‘chief market.’ First, the description was important to include, since he was limited for space and therefore would have included only words, phrases, and events that he felt were significant. Also, this description signifies that cities in this time period not only had more than one market, but that one of the markets was either larger or more significant than the others” (Hunt, “Marketplace,” 138).