# Why did telegrams not have a period STOP **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 18, 2011, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-telegrams-not-have-a-period-stop/571836 "2011-02-18T18:53:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-telegrams-not-have-a-period-stop/571836/1 "2011-02-18T18:53:43Z")
Whenever you hear someone read a telegram, they say the word “stop” at the end of the sentence STOP Why did they do that STOP It seems simpler to send a a single code for period rather than 4 letters STOP And didn’t people pay by the letter STOP It seems like all those stops would cost a lot of extra money STOP ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-telegrams-not-have-a-period-stop/571836/2 "2011-02-18T18:59:08Z")
Normally, telegrams were charged by the word, not the letter, so sending a word such as STOP would not be more expensive to the sender than sending a one-code punctuation mark, which would also have counted as a word. While present-day morse code contains a character for a period (that’s a triple A, or .-.-.-), I think Morse’s initial code chart did not have special characters. So the STOP was just a substitute for that, to make telegrams more easily understandable by dividing the text into phrases. By the way, your question is phrased slightly inaccurately (historically) in that it ends with a STOP. Since the purpose of the STOP was to divide the text into phrases for ease of understanding, there would not have been a need for a STOP at the end, and normally people would not put one there. ---
**Author:** ![Lare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/53a042/32.png) [@Lare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lare)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-telegrams-not-have-a-period-stop/571836/3 "2011-02-18T18:59:11Z")
Well because just a period is an E. Slightly more seriously, there is a period (full stop to our UK brethren) which is ._._.\_ I don’t know if saying “stop” is just a grammatical notation. There was an SD thread about it: > **[Saying STOP when reading telegrams](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=124683)** > > A classic device from older movies is to read a telegram aloud like this: “Message received STOP Will send troops immediately STOP”, and so on. I was thinking about this for some odd reason, and wonder whether anyone actually have said “stop” like... I think post 3 covers it. ---
**Author:** ![Philster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/13edae/32.png) [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-telegrams-not-have-a-period-stop/571836/4 "2011-02-18T19:01:36Z")
“STOP” was inserted in the old fashioned telegrams at the end of sentences, because punctuation used to cost extra. Letters were free (up to a limit). So senders would make their messages such that it made use of this limit. You could get the wording under the limit, even using “STOP” and avoid punctuation charges. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-telegrams-not-have-a-period-stop/571836/5 "2011-02-18T19:02:53Z")
Graham Greene’s truly great novel _Our Man in Havana_ has the protagonist, Jim Wormold, encipher and send a number of telegraphic reports to the MI5 with full punctuation spelt out: Not just “comma” and “colon”, but also “beginning paragraph three” etc. ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2011, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-telegrams-not-have-a-period-stop/571836/6 "2011-02-18T19:19:27Z")
I only sent telegrams once or twice – and about 50 years ago – but, knowing about the “STOP” convention, read up on the rules, and found that you could use normal punctuation, and a full-stop or comma did not get charged as a full word, at least by the Australian Post Office (as it was then.)