In this report: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/021227.html
Cecil listed several ‘goodbye’ sayings. On was “30”. Where does this come from?
My bad. This should have gone into “Comments on Cecil’s Columns”.
I was thinking the exact same thing, and can’t find anything on it. And yes, someone please move this post to Cecil’s section.
-30- (note the dashes) is journalists’ jargon for “this is the end of the article”. It tells the editors (and the typesetters, back when there were commonly such) where to stop working. Nobody’s really sure why, although there are lots of theories. In any case, Cecil, being a employed by a newspaper, is no doubt quite familiar with this, despite his apparent ignorance of the dashes.
Wasn’t the newspaper “-30-” originally three X’s? I’m not suggesting it goes back to ancient Rome, of course.
–Nott
It goes back to the telegraph in the 19th Century.
From http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19970314
Over time, the three XXX’s got read as “30” by literate types(no danger of today’s folk ever doing that :rolleyes: )
These days, of course, XXX is something many children cannot look up on the internet. It would trip the Netnanny software, just as Super Bowl XXX does.