etaoin shrdlu
So what the hell is the deal with that? I know Cecil himself promised an upcoming column on the subject, but I’m damned impatient. It sounds to me like an in-joke. And there’s nothing more irritating than an in-joke when you’re not in on it. (Okay, maybe genital itching.)
So what’s with it?
Note: If it’s anything like WYSIWYG, then I’ve heard the answer several times, just failed to register it. Please set me straight, Straight Dopers.
Etaoin shrdlu is a mnemonic for remembering one calculation of the order of occurrence of letters in English. It was possibly made famous and given an odd spin by its use within the Artificial Intelligence debate,being used in Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstatter in the seventies.
I agree that Cecil’s reference in this week’s column could have been clearer, but when he said “Remember etaoin shrdlu?”, that was shorthand for "All of my true followers have memorized their copies of More of the Straight Dope, so they are aware of my classic column on this topic, which appeared on page 262: What’s the origin of the mysterious phrase “etaoin
shrdlu”?
Or, to put it more simply, it’s one row of keys on the old Linotype typesetting machine. The typewriter/keyboard equivalent is QWERTY UIOP.
It was also the name of the bookworm in the old Pogo comic strip.
With regard to AI, “shrdlu” was the name of Terry Winograd’s program used in his natural language research in the late 60’s, early 70’s:
http://hci.stanford.edu/cs147/examples/shrdlu/
Now, why did Winograd chose the second letter grouping? From MAD magazine, of course, which found it almost as hilarious as “potzrebie”. Since you hardly ever see anything but the first two groups of letters, I think I’m going to name something “cmfgyp” when I get the chance.
Etaoin Shrdlu was a humorous SF novelle (story) written (50’s) by Frederic Brown about a monotype machine that actually gained intelligence by understanding the books that were set by the typographer. It called itself Etaoin Shrdlu
and all ended in disaster.
I went to the Museum of Printing in Haverhill, MA, this weekend. Among their collection was a working Linotype machine, and they offered to generate a slug for me.
For any dopers in the area, this is a fantastic museum; old books, presses, typesetting, typewriters, photo typesetting, and a nice little collection of computers and storage media. Robot Arm says check it out.
Check this 1978 documentary (29 mins, titled Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu) about the last day of hot typesetting at the New York Times. It’s really well done and a fascinating look at the sunset of a major technology.
[Discourse space] FarewellEtaoinShrdlu - YouTube
Fascinating! I wonder if those typesetters ever had any lead related health problems?
OK, my dad was a Linotype operator for years. etaoin shrdlu are the keys hit if the operator runs his finger down the first then second column of keys (from the left side) of the keyboard. He would do this if he made a mistake so the slug produced would be easy to find. Later the slug would be easy to find on the galley and a replacement slug would be cast. Every now and then an etaoin shrdlu slug might make it onto the press and into print, but this wasn’t common.
Oh, I’d bet a large sum of money they did. My Dad, the electronics repair guy, told me several times about fellows he worked with who would make bench repairs while holding the solder in their mouths (right hand = solder pencil, left hand = holding the part in place). With typesetters, use your imagination.
I remember reading something when I was a kid about this concatenation of letters, and I wonder if this was it. My memory of it is very vague, but it seems like it was much shorter than a story, more like humorous verse of a page or so. I guess I should try to find this story and see if it’s familiar.
eta: I found it and read a few pages, and that’s definitely not what I remember. I did find reference to a short story by James Thurber in 1931, and I think that’s what I remember reading. It was in a book of humor my parents had. I haven’t found it yet, but I’ll keep looking.
I had several books by Denys Parsons of humorous misprints and double meanings from newspapers that Parsons ascribed to a character named Gobfrey Shrdlu.
I know I’m replying to a revived zombie, but nevertheless:
This reminds me of the time I went on a tour of the local newspaper a long time ago. This was around 1970, maybe. The linotype machines in action is something I still remember clearly.
Funny, I memorized it as “Eaton Rish,” an easier-to-remember mnemonic that is close to etaoin shrdlu. It may also be close enough for a casual game of hangman (for which I had learned it).
A web search these days, of course, thinks I must actually mean “Eaton Risk” or “Eaton Irish” because, you know, only idiots can type straight. Using the actual quotes brought up a village in the UK. No sign of this being a letters-in-descending-order-of-frequency mnemonic.
Anyone else know “Eaton Rish?”
Yes, Eaton Rish is what I remember and why my first guess in Wordle is always ATONE, and my second guess uses whatever letters I found plus some variant of RISH. It’s worked pretty well for me so far. 
Updated the link to point to the 1986 Straight Dope column
Hey, I remember reading this thread when it first was posted.
So why can’t I remember why I went upstairs earlier today?
I learned about that from this doco, which AFAIK is only available on DVD; I got one through interlibrary loan.
ETA: It’s a zombie thread a decade older than the movie itself!