Legend of "-30-"

These are the responses in the CARR-L LISTSERV:

-30-

An editor knocked at the Pearly Gates
His face was scarred and cold:
He stood before the man of fate
for admission to the fold
"What have you done?" St. Peter asked
"To gain admission here?"
"I've been an editor, sir," he said
"For many and many a year."
The Pearly Gates swung open wide,
St. Peter touched the bell--
"Come in," he said, "and choose your harp,
You've had your share of hell."
     --Anonymous

When I worked for UPI, many years ago, we were told it originated from a teletype keyboard that provided only caps and the numbers were on letter keys rather than on separate keys. The numbers 3 and 0 were on "B" and, I believe, "I," although it may have been "Y." Hence, it was the way teletype operators signed off the wire, a shortened form of "goodbye." Regards, jd

To add to the mix, AP reporters and telegraphers of old signed off with 73 or 73s which I believe meant something like all best wishes. Or does anyone have a better recollection. Warren Lerude, University of Nevada Reynolds School of Journalism Reno (and ex AP staffer in San Diego (GO), Reno (RO), Las Vegas (VG), Los Angeles (LA) and filing through San Francisco (FX) and Kansas City (KX).

On Thursday, 11 Sep 1997, Stephen G. Bloom wrote:

The most plausible explanation for -30- has to do with Civil War telegraphers transmitting stories from reporters. At the end of each transmission, they typed XXX, translated from Roman numerals to 30.

Other possible explanations, some of which have moved onto newspaper lore:

* In the early days of The Newspaper Guild, reporters ended their stories with "30," to demand a living wage of $30 per week. Once met, the usage continued.

* Telegraph operators transmitted a continuing series of "30"s over the wire when they took a 30-minute lunch break.

* A two-fingered reporter was working alone in the newsroom one night at (fill in your favorite newsroom), pounding away at his Royal. He suddenly pitched forward, the victim of a heart attack. Colleagues noticed the dead man's left finger striking the 3, his right the 0. [Obituaries in trade newspaper journals often use the headline, "30."]

* A bored reporter who had plenty of time to kill wanted to see how far he could stretch his index and middle fingers on his right hand by touching numbers keys on the typewriter, thereby typing "30." His city editor was suitably impressed. "30" became newspaper policy.

* A variation of the "30" story is the usage of ### instead of "30" at the end of broadcast copy so rip-and-readers wouldn't try to pronounce ###.

During a search in the library a while back, this aging journalism prof happened on three aging journalism texts that defined the term "thirty" or "-30-." Because the authors wrote at a time when telegraphers still operated and hot type was in use at newspapers, I trust their explanations.

The figure 30 in a circle was defined as "the telegrapher's sign indicating the end of a day or a night report" in the text of M. Lyle Spencer (professor of English, Lawrence College/on the staff of "The Milwaukee Journal") in "News Writing: The Gathering, Handling and Writing of News Stories" (Boston, 1917). In a "terminology" section, Spencer called 30 "a telegrapher's signal indicating the end of the message; also put at the end of a story to indicate its completion."

Similarly, 30 was referred to as "the telegraphic 'goodnight'" by Donald D. Hoover in "'Copy!' A Handbook for Reporters and Students of Journalism" (New York, 1931).

A more recent text (Norman J. Radder and John E. Stempel, "Newspaper Editing, Make-up and Headlines" (New York, 1942)) gives the same origin: "In its original usage it was the code sign-off for telegraphers. Eventually it came to mean the end of a story, and some editors write 30 as an end mark, but printers prefer # because it avoids confusion between 30 and -3- or 3-em, frequently written to call for a three-em dash to separate portions of a story."

Radder and Stempel both have chapters on editing telegraph copy.

-30-

Larry Lorenz - Professor of journalism - Loyola University, New Orleans

An old friend once told me this story:

-30- comes from an AP reporter who was killed during the big San Francisco Earthquake. He was filing his story and died when the building collapsed. "30" was the last thing to come across his transmission. I don't know if this is a myth or not, but it satisfies the romantic in me.

Regards,

John Hellerman
Associate Publicist
Jaffe Associates, Inc.
hellermanj@get-serious.com
http://www.get-serious.com

One "legend" has it, and there are many, that "30" originated with telegraphers, who would key the Morse code for "XXX" -- dah-dih-dih-dah dah-dih-dih-dah dah-did-dih dah -- to indicate the end of a message.

"XXX" also is the Roman numeral for 30.

And so . . .

Bill Kling
KlingUSA Political Communications
Manassas, Virginia
kling@usa.net

Columnist, "Political Animal" The Prince William Journal Manassas, Virginia

In the required typography course at Illinois, ca 1964, we learned this version of the tradition:

When several stories were being set in metal type, the resulting galleys needed visual breaks to let proofreaders and page compositors tell at a glance where each story ended.

A horizontal line extending most of the way across the column did this. An "em" is a space equal to the width of a capital M, or the height of the type. An efficient way to make such a line on a typecasting machine was to set a 30-em dash, centered. The instruction for setting this was a "30" or more properly (thank you, Prof. Glenn Hanson) a "--30--" centered and circled on the copy.

The print shop required this of editors, and they in turn delegated the task to subeditors and reporters and made it uniform.

Now the soapbox: Electronic page compositor software has ineptly incorporated a weak-sister version of this tradition, in the all-too-subtle symbols for end of block and end of story.

Old Unipresser Dick Harnett had compiled a marvelous "code" book and jargon dictionary used on the wires. (His e-mail address is Unipress95@aol.com)

In it, he states: "Western Union Telegraph Code, adopted in 1859. The follwoing is from a version published in 1908 as "The Telegraph Instructor" by G. M. Dodge, Valparaiso, Indiana:"

30 -- No more, the end
73 -- Best regards

He notes, p. 4: "The use of '30' by newspapermen to end a dispatch is an offshoot of the telegraphers' code. There are several intriguing explanations for it.

"In 1940 Charles Collins of the Chciago Tribune said telegraphers in the 1870s used an x for a period, xx for the end of a paragraph and a triple xxx after the last item. Taken to be the Roman numerals, this became '30.' Collins said this explanation came from Walter P. Phillips. However, as published in 1914 the [generally standard] Phillips Code did not include '30.'

"Another version of the story is that '30' stands for a 30-em dash, which was used by printers between items. The flaw in this explanation is that telegraphers were using 30 before the linotype was invented."

He also has some admittedly rather fanciful tales re: the invention. They are far more inventive than the stories posted here. So far.

Just to disagree a bit, I might note that printers used galleys (trays) for type handset in the stick well before Mergenthaler's Linotype came into wide use after 1886.

Ed