# "30" as a 'goodbye' saying? - Elvis has left the building **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [December 27, 2002, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-as-a-goodbye-saying-elvis-has-left-the-building/145158 "2002-12-27T14:30:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Rucksinator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/898d66/32.png) [@Rucksinator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rucksinator)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-as-a-goodbye-saying-elvis-has-left-the-building/145158/1 "2002-12-27T14:30:55Z")
In this report: [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/021227.html](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/021227.html) Cecil listed several ‘goodbye’ sayings. On was “30”. Where does this come from? ---
**Author:** ![Rucksinator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/898d66/32.png) [@Rucksinator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rucksinator)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-as-a-goodbye-saying-elvis-has-left-the-building/145158/2 "2002-12-27T14:34:37Z")
My bad. This should have gone into “Comments on Cecil’s Columns”. ---
**Author:** ![jonfromdenver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/82dd89/32.png) [@jonfromdenver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jonfromdenver)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-as-a-goodbye-saying-elvis-has-left-the-building/145158/3 "2002-12-27T15:19:25Z")
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. ---
**Author:** ![Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-as-a-goodbye-saying-elvis-has-left-the-building/145158/4 "2002-12-27T18:00:12Z")
**-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. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-as-a-goodbye-saying-elvis-has-left-the-building/145158/5 "2002-12-27T20:00:49Z")
Wasn’t the newspaper “-30-” originally three X’s? I’m not suggesting it goes back to ancient Rome, of course. –Nott ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-as-a-goodbye-saying-elvis-has-left-the-building/145158/6 "2002-12-27T22:18:10Z")
It goes back to the telegraph in the 19th Century. > [@](#): > > The use of thirty for the end of a story is an old piece of journalism and telegraphy slang that first appears in the late nineteenth century. In order to signal the end of a transmission, it was necessary to have a code for the end of a transmission that was unmistakably not part of the transmission itself. This code was the sequence XXX, From [http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19970314](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: ) ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/30-as-a-goodbye-saying-elvis-has-left-the-building/145158/7 "2002-12-27T22:50:01Z")
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.