running, veterans

I’m just sending you bloggies this explanatory memorandum so that you can understand me if I experience a throwback now and then and suddenly skew off into making use of enigmatic words.

Long years before today’s txt, that rather wild and often inscrutable system of communication affected by present-day emailers – long, long before that journalists who are now greybeards made use of two or three other styles of speedy typing of their stories.

And of course don’t forget that writers up to the 1940s and 50s often scrawled out their masterpieces by hand. Actually, it’s an ideal system for producing really creative work, if not always legible to others. I myself still often find I’m jotting down notes in longhand but then unfortunately I can’t read them when I come to refer to them later. So, for the sake of legibility, by the time I came to my second novel, 1958, I switched to the typewriter, but there was an awkward penalty if you were wanting to get a novel published for you would then have to make three or four copies of your work while you were typing – one to keep, one for the publisher and a spare for subsequent corrections. There were no photocopiers at that time but at least you didn’t have to type a new copy all over again, as had been necessary in earlier days. Instead you did this with the help of sheets of carbon paper slipped between the pages of the main typed text and another sheet to receive the black imprint from the back of the carbon paper. For this reason we called a carbon copy a “black”. It wad OK for news articles but just imagine the endless bore when making corrections and amendments to a whole book, having to tippex the changes not only on the main page but again on each of the copies separately!)

Anyway, today going Online makes it all kids stuff, with the result that millions more people are trying their hand at novels. (Of course the greatest novels in the world, by authors such as Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy, were written all in longhand with quill pens. Any copies were done by scribes.)

All that’s no more than an introduction to what I’m really supposed to be explaining now, the actual wording styles of text. In the reporter’s room in my day, we saved time with recognised abbreviations, such as “t” for “the”, “fm” for “from”, “yy” for yesterday, “thr” for “their”, “ctte” for “committee”, “mtg” for “meeting”... The compositors and linotype operators knew what was meant when they received our “takes” and sent them to the press.

And as for this modern txt we also had a lot of jokey equivalents, such as “ur2 awful Ic, 2 awful Ic4me”...

More businesslike was what the foreign correspondent would use in his dispatches, known as Cablese, the function of which was to save his newspaper costs. The universal charge for cabling was penny a word, same for a long word as for a short. The fewer words to cable your story, the better - penny wise! This called for the invention of portmanteau words, again a system recognised by the printers: words wangled and mangled into quaint telescoped forms for the sake of economies.

Typical message you might send back to the paper: DAILY LIAR LONDONFLEETEST STOP UNABLE PROCEED TANGANYIKAWARDS ROADWISE STOP IMPIS UPBRANDISHING ASSEGAIS EXBUSH STOP SITUATION HOURLY UGLIER STOP PLANEHIRE ADVISABLE STOP CABLE FURTHER REMITTANCE URGENTEST SYLVERLEGS

There was also in civilian life, the telegram, also penny a word, and also needing economies of style. This was often condensed too far by ordinary people, with trouble maybe following. SEE NEXT SYLVESTERBLOG FOR HILARIOUS REALLIFE EXAMPLE STOP.

Having got that off my chest, we can now proceed Athleticsward.

HERE’S A CHANCE TO READ HOTSTUFF...

	Author:	Sylvester Stein (Sylvester Stein's profile, Sylvester Stein's blog)
	Posted On:	Mon, 2007-11-12 15:41
	Tags:	running and veterans
	Comments:	0 comments, go to comments