Why did telegraph messages SOUND WEIRD STOP?

[No Wikipedia Cites]

Whenever I hear or see a telegraph message (in old movies and such) it looks really WEIRD WHY STOP DONT GET STOP

For instance, why no lowercase? (or why not all lowercase, which would be slightly easier to read?) Why use the psychopathic/shouting STOP instead of a period? It should be much easier to telegraph a single period than STOP. Or at least take up less room. evenwithoutpunctuationonecouldread so why bother at all with STOP and other stuff?

[md2000]

You paid by the word. I suppose when reading messages it's important to know where the period was. It was written as "STOP" to ensure it was visible, not a smudge on the paper.

Telegrams were in Morse Code, which had no shift or case options. When paying by the word, be as terse as possible - no "the", "and", etc. unless necessary.

Not sure if there was a charge for the period, but to avoid confusion it was written out - both by sender filling out the form to be sent and by receiving station. (Bad handwriting was not a modern invention...)

[Grey]

Well how would you differentiate between ... --- .... or ... --- ... ?

It's a signal to noise issue when trying to punctuate in the middle of the telegram. Obviously at the end of the message you wouldn't need to flag the "stop" though I guess people might have if they didn't mind paying for it.

[LawMonkey]

Can't say why they were typed in all caps, though of course Morse code has no way of indicating capitalization. As to STOP and the general stilted style, this came from the billing procedures--there was, as I recall, a flat rate for a certain number of words, after which you were charged by the word. STOP was not counted as a word.

No cite for this; I'm just going from my memory of reading about this sometime. I may be wrong about the per word; may have been per character instead.

[Jas09]

I believe the periods kept getting lost during WWI, so the military started using STOP for intramessage full stops. The generally weren't used at the end of the message. I would guess the rest of the public picked it up from them.

There is no mixed case in Morse Code, so it had to be all upper or lower, or added by the receiver/translator.

[Jas09]

Here's a booklet from 1928 on "How to write telegrams properly" - it has some interesting information. http://www.telegraph-office.com/pages/telegram.html

[Freddy the Pig]

Originally Posted by No Wikipedia Cites

Why use the psychopathic/shouting STOP instead of a period? It should be much easier to telegraph a single period than STOP

True enough. But telegraph messages have to be encoded and decoded. Somebody writes the message out on paper, somebody else encodes it, and a third person decodes it by writing (or typing) it back onto paper. And on all three of those steps, periods tend to get lost--not written clearly, or not transmitted, or not written down in the right place by the decoder. STOP is less prone to these errors.

[Leo Bloom]

I don't know if this is done now, what with email and all, but news stories were closed by a bunch of dashes and the numeral "30" and some more dashes.

I don't know why "30" was used, but it still served the same function I believe, but for a "grand stop," so to speak.

[johnpost]

not only might a period be incorrectly interpreted in the transcribed telegram but the number of morse code elements to send STOP is only double that of a period. so it is different from what a transcribed telegram appears.

morse code has no upper and lower case letters. even early teleprinting had no upper and lower case letters.

[RealityChuck]

No one is really sure where the "-- 30 -- " came from, but some more plausible explanations are:

1. Originally, stories ended with XXX. In Roman numerals, that translates to "30."
2. It's telegrapher's shorthand for "end."
3. The first new telegraph message had 30 words in it, so ended with the word count.

#2 seems the most likely; there is evidence that reporters used the Phillips Code to abbreviate messages. If you scroll down to "Wire Signals," "30" indicates "end of message."

[njtt]

A period (full stop) in Morse is · — · — · —, longer than any letter code (a single dot wold be the letter e). Although Morse does allow for some punctuation marks, they are all rather long and complex and, I suspect it was not much used, and, as a consequence, Morse operators were probably not so practiced in sending and decoding it as they were with letters and numbers. You might as well just spell out STOP for ease and clarity.

[Keeve]

Originally Posted by Jas09

Here's a booklet from 1928 on "How to write telegrams properly" - it has some interesting information. http://www.telegraph-office.com/pages/telegram.html

Fascinating! I'm not surprised that money was sent by telegraph, but for some reason, sending flowers does surprise me. Amazon.com is slightly less amazing now than it was a few minutes ago. Big changes seem smaller.

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by Keeve

Fascinating! I'm not surprised that money was sent by telegraph, but for some reason, sending flowers does surprise me. Amazon.com is slightly less amazing now than it was a few minutes ago. Big changes seem smaller.

Candy too. I remember candygrams, although I never sent or received one.

[Mr Downtown]

If you look at photographic images of old telegrams online, most actually contained periods rather than the word STOP. A year ago I decided to make a convincing-looking telegram to wish my nephew well on his wedding day and reluctantly went with historic accuracy over cinematic assumption.

[njtt]

Another point, though, is that in the later days of telegrams many were dictated (and, often, read out to the recipient) over the phone. Even after phones became common and cheap for local calls, telegrams were often cheaper or more practical for long distance communication. In those circumstances, it is actually easier to say "STOP" than "FULL STOP" or "PERIOD", especially if, as seems to have been the case, this was an accepted convention (and if you are not Victor Borge). So even if a period was actually used in the printed version of the message, people might still have been inclined to read it out as "STOP". This is most often what you are hearing in old movies, hearing the message read out rather than seeing the printed telegram. It is probably realistic.

[Leo Bloom]

For ultimate conciseness, Gilbert and Sullivan had a word-code in which essential info on profits, attendance, etc., would be sent. It was not so much for secrecy, I don't think.

[Giles]

Originally Posted by Mr Downtown

If you look at photographic images of old telegrams online, most actually contained periods rather than the word STOP. A year ago I decided to make a convincing-looking telegram to wish my nephew well on his wedding day and reluctantly went with historic accuracy over cinematic assumption.

Back about 50 years ago I sent one or two telegrams to my parents while I was away at camp. (For reasons that I won't go into, I was getting a heavily discounted rate, so it was not much more expensive than writing a letter saying that I was doing fine.) I carefully read up on the regulations, and found that you could include punctuation at no extra cost, so I used commas and full stops rather than "COMMA" and "STOP".

[gaffa]

Originally Posted by Leo Bloom

For ultimate conciseness, Gilbert and Sullivan had a word-code in which essential info on profits, attendance, etc., would be sent. It was not so much for secrecy, I don't think.

The source of a very amusing scene in the movie Topsy-Turvy.

[abel29a]

If they charged by the word (as appear to be the case), wouldn't people strive to find the longest words possible in their Thesarus? (At least, I know I would) Why not type a whole sentence as one word for that matter, and let the recipient do the decoding? Or maybe this was frowned upon

[Giles]

Originally Posted by abel29a

If they charged by the word (as appear to be the case), wouldn't people strive to find the longest words possible in their Thesarus? (At least, I know I would) Why not type a whole sentence as one word for that matter, and let the recipient do the decoding? Or maybe this was frowned upon

There were rules about word length, and about the use of English words: it was something like, use normal English words or made-up words no more than seven letters long. Just yesterday (looking through a library's special collection) I saw an old code book with tens of thousands of made-up seven-letter words conveying special messages, so "AVEDIGU" might mean "Arriving by train at 9 p.m." (to make up a random example). Of course, both the sender and receiver would need a copy of the code book, but its use would both save money and give a bit of confidentiality to the message.

[abel29a]

Ah, makes sense.

[Lukeinva]

My guess is, it is only in the last 10 to 15 years that typing in all caps is considered shouting.

[Quercus]

Originally Posted by johnpost

not only might a period be incorrectly interpreted in the transcribed telegram but the number of morse code elements to send STOP is only double that of a period.

And, since they had so much practice at it, I bet most operators could send "STOP" in about the same amount of time as a period.

[CookingWithGas]

IIRC a musician (I'm thinking Mason Williams) wrote a little book that included a "telegram poem" with lines like:

I FIRST MET YOU AT A BUS STOP
AND THE SIGHT OF YOU MADE MY HEART STOP

Can't find a cite, saw the book maybe 30 years ago.

[Bear_Nenno]

Originally Posted by Jas09

Here's a booklet from 1928 on "How to write telegrams properly" - it has some interesting information. http://www.telegraph-office.com/pages/telegram.html

Pretty decent answer in that link:

Since marks of punctuation ordinarily are used in written correspondence and their omission may affect the sense of your communication, care must be exercised in the construction of a message from which they are to be excluded.

If you do not intend to stipulate that marks of punctuation be transmitted, write your message without punctuation and read it carefully to make sure that it is not ambiguous. If it seems impossible to convey your meaning clearly without the use of punctuation, use may be made of the celebrated word "stop," which is known the world over as the official telegraphic or cable word for "period."

This word "stop" may have perplexed you the first time you encountered it in a message. Use of this word in telegraphic communications was greatly increased during the World War, when the Government employed it widely as a precaution against having messages garbled or misunderstood, as a result of the misplacement or emission of the tiny dot or period.

Officials felt that the vital orders of the Government must be definite and clear cut, and they therefore used not only the word "stop," to indicate a period, but also adopted the practice of spelling out "comma," "colon," and "semi-colon." The word "query" often was used to indicate a question mark. Of all these, however, "stop" has come into most widespread use, and vaudeville artists and columnists have employed it with humorous effect, certain that the public would understand the allusion in connection with telegrams. It is interesting to note, too, that although the word is obviously English it has come into general use In all languages that are used in telegraphing or cabling.

"Stop" is of course never necessary at the end of a message.

[t-bonham@scc.net]

Most telegraph messages (after the very early years) were transmitted using the Baudot code (or in America, the Murray variation of it). Those are 5 bit codes, so a maximum of 32 characters. The alphabet takes 26 (upper case only, no room for lower case), 1 for a space, leaving 5 characters remaining. Not enough room for a full set of punctuation characters, those were used for control characters. There wasn't even room for the 10 digits, those had to be sent with an extra figure shift before them.

So you couldn't use lower case or periods in a telegraph message -- there was no such character to send.

[Sinisterniik]

Originally Posted by Jas09

Here's a booklet from 1928 on "How to write telegrams properly" - it has some interesting information. http://www.telegraph-office.com/pages/telegram.html

I found this interesting:

If you are telegraphing a person or firm you are positive is well known nationally or locally, a brief address is sufficient. If you have occasion, for example, to telegraph the President ,of the United States, a message addressed to:

The President, White House, Washington, D. C.

will reach the Chief Executive if filed at any telegraph office in the world. To write it:

His, Excellency, The President of the United States, The White House, Washington, D. C.

Is to be needlessly verbose. A telegram to a Member of Congress addressed:

Hon. John Doe, Member Congress, Washington, D. C.

will reach the addressee as surely and speedily as a message addressed to:

Hon. John Doe, Member of Congress from the State of Blank, Room 346 House Office Building, Washington, D. C.

Is this still true with USPS? Can I address a letter to my Congressman in Washington and get it sent there without a street address?

Also, I'm going to start giving out my address as "His, Excellency,..."

[pulykamell]

Originally Posted by Leo Bloom

I don't know if this is done now, what with email and all, but news stories were closed by a bunch of dashes and the numeral "30" and some more dashes.

I don't know, either, but in J-school in the mid-90s, we were still typing (or writing) "-more-" at the bottom of pages that continued to the next and "-30-" for the last page of news stories we'd hand in for assignments.

[Mk VII]

Journalists used to use cablese to reduce the number of words in an international cable; this [probably apocryphal] exchange supposedly passed between the London Daily Telegraph's office and their man in the Congo:-

WHY UNNEWS QUERY

- UNNEWS HERE STOP

- UNNEWS THERE UNJOB HERE STOP

- UPSTICKJOB ARSEWARDS STOP RUDE LETTER FOLLOWS STOP

Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop famously contains several examples

UNPROCEED LAKUWARD STOP … REMAIN CONTACTING CUMREDS STOP NEWS EXYOU UNRECEIVED STOP DAILY HARD NEWS ESSENTIALIST STOP…

[wolfman]

Originally Posted by abel29a

If they charged by the word (as appear to be the case), wouldn't people strive to find the longest words possible in their Thesarus? (At least, I know I would) Why not type a whole sentence as one word for that matter, and let the recipient do the decoding? Or maybe this was frowned upon

I always wondered if it worked the same way in German. It seems like You can put a whole sentence into a compound noun in German if you try hard enough.

[Mk VII]

There was a maximum number of characters in a word.

[whitetho]

Originally Posted by abel29a

If they charged by the word (as appear to be the case), wouldn't people strive to find the longest words possible in their Thesarus? (At least, I know I would) Why not type a whole sentence as one word for that matter, and let the recipient do the decoding? Or maybe this was frowned upon

There were all sorts of rules and sub-rules to keep things from getting out of hand. Some examples:

Originally Posted by The Telegraph Instructor, G. M. Dodge, 1917

Plain language messages (i. e., neither Code nor Cipher) may be written in any language that can be expressed in Roman letters. In such messages each word of fifteen letters or less is counted as a word, and words of over fifteen letters are counted at the rate of fifteen letters or fractions of fifteen letters to a word,

Code messages may contain words belonging to one or more of the following languages: English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and Latin. The use of words of other languages is not allowed. Code messages may also contain artificial words-that is, groups of letters so combined as to be pronounceable in at least one of the eight admitted languages. In code messages each code word (whether genuine or artificial) of ten letters or less is counted as a word, and no code word of more than ten letters can be accepted. If any words in plain language, and of more than ten letters each, are used in code messages, they should be counted at the rate of ten letters or fraction of ten letters to a word.

In cipher messages, which may be composed of groups of figures or of groups of letters, the groups are counted at the rate of five figures or letters, or fraction thereof, to a word. Words in plain language inserted in such messages are counted as instructed in plain language messages.

COUNTING OF WORDS, ETC.

When the letters "ch" come together in the spelling of a dictionary word, they are counted as one letter. In artificial words the combination is counted as two letters.

Inverted commas, the two signs of the parenthesis and each separate figure, letter, underline or character will be counted as one word.

Signs of punctuation, hyphens and apostrophes are not counted or sent except upon formal demand of the sender, in which case they will be charged for as one word each.

Groups of figures will be counted and charged for at the rate of five figures, or fraction thereof, as one word. Decimal points and commas, used in the formation of numbers, also bars of division and letters added to figures to form ordinal numbers, are to be counted as figures and charged for at the rate of five figures or fraction thereof, as one word.

Words joined by a hyphen or separated by an apostrophe are counted as so many separate words.

Abbreviated and misspelled words and illegitimate compound words and words combined in a manner contrary to the usages of any of the languages authorized, are inadmissible.

[clairobscur]

Originally Posted by Jas09

Here's a booklet from 1928 on "How to write telegrams properly" - it has some interesting information. http://www.telegraph-office.com/pages/telegram.html

Interesting reading.