Excursus

Language Log posts about the following erratum that brings to light an interesting piece of markup whose origin is shrouded in mystery:

An article on Thursday about the arraignment of three men in the shooting of two New York police officers, one of whom died, misstated the schedule set by a judge for a trial in the case. The trial is expected to begin by February, not by “Feb. 30.” The error occurred when an editor saw the symbol “- 30 -” typed at the bottom of the reporter’s article and combined it with the last word, “February.” It is actually a notation that journalists have used through the years to denote the end of an article. Although many no longer use it or even know what it means, some journalists continue to debate its origin. A popular theory is that it was a sign-off code developed by telegraph operators. Another tale is that reporters began signing their articles with “30” to demand a living wage of $30 per week. Most dictionaries still include the symbol in the definition of thirty, noting that it means “conclusion” or “end of a news story.”

So what is the origin of “-30-“? No one seems to know. What is interesting, though, is the number and variety of apocryphral stories there are concerning its genesis. Googling revealed the following explanations:

1. In the American West, dispatches were delivered from the telegraph office to the newspaper. The telegraph office closed at 3am. And so the operator would write at the end of the last dispatch “3 o’clock”—which became “3o’c”, and then “3o”, and finally “30”.
2. Telegraph operators would mark the end of their transmissions with “xxx”—later misread as the Roman numeral for thirty.
3. Handwritten newspaper stories used “x” to mark the end of a sentence, “xx” to mark the end of a paragraph, and “xxx” to mark the end of the story.
4. 30 ems was the maximum length of a line typeset on a linotype machine and so “30” came to designate end of line, and subsequently, end of story.
5. The Associated Press initially allowed their member papers only thirty telegrams a day. The last of the daily quota was labelled “30”.
6. Press wires closed half past the hour, or thirty minutes past the hour.
7. The end of the reign of the “thirty tyrants” appointed by the Spartans at the close of the Pelopennesian War to rule Athens was an occasion of great rejoicing. As is the end of a story—“30”.
8. In Bengali, “so” means farewell. A report of the East India Company misprinted this as “30”.
9. Telegraph operator number 30 stayed at his post reporting news of some disaster and Death supervened.
10. A reference to the thiry pieces of silver that led to Jesus’ death.

-30-