-30- used as meaning end of story.

Question

http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=19970314

And, currently being discussed here:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=300928

My big problem is this claim at the first link:
"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, which, many decades before the rise of the pornographic film industry, was unlikely to occur as a part of the actual story."
It just so turns out on the Straight Dope Message boards we found an authoritative site listing 30 as a procedural sign (prosign) in Morse code as early as 1959, meaning "No more - the end". The above randomhouse.com link mentions 30 "first appears in the late nineteenth century". 1859 was in the middle of the nineteenth century. And, nobody has yet to be able to document that in Morse code XXX was ever used as a prosign. Why use XXX when the standard says to use 30?However, the one thing that has me wondering is might have newspapers before the telegraph became popular (late 1840s to 1850s) been using XXX as and end of story marker, and then switched over later to using 30 because that is what the telegraphers used? Weren't there any instructional manuals before telegraphy became popular that told reporters exactly what to put at the end of a story? Or books written by newspaper folks saying what they put at the end of stories? Heck, I'd have thought that there would still be the original story copy left of some early 1800s news stories.

Such as those that were about a great tragedy, an important political event, etc. that someone saved for posterity. If XXX was ever used as an end of story marker, there ought to be some proof still around documenting it.

Thus, does anyone have a credible cite that says that newspaper folks ever, at any time, were ending stories with XXX to mean "end of story"?
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Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]"The use of thirty for the end of a story is an old piece of journalismand telegraphy slang that first ... a transmission that was unmistakably not part of the transmission itself. This code was the sequence *** . . .[/nq]
Even if this is true, the convention would not be "slang" which is a special lexicon.
Wire services (e.g. Associated Press. The Canadian Press) signalled at least as late as 1970 the end of a story (typed on paper or transmitted by teleprinter) by (on a line by itself) -30-
This probably went out of use after computer typesetting came into general use (beginning about 1967). Up to the early 1960s wire service information was TYPED ALL IN CAPITALS LIKE THIS, using the Baudot code (devised approx. 1900). Computers of the 1960s had enough bandwith to permit (a) Both lower and upper case, typed like this,
(b) Non-printing "control characters," for such functions as marking the beginning and end of a story, making the mark -30- unnecessary.

Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Thus, does anyone have a credible cite that says that newspaper folks ever, at any time, were ending stories with *** to mean "end of story"?[/nq]

Sal
Ye olde swarm of links: thousands of links for writers, researchers and the terminally curious

Usenet · Answer

[nq:1]Thus, does anyone have a credible cite that says that newspaper folks ever, at any time, were ending stories with *** to mean "end of story"?[/nq]
"The end of the release is designated in one of several ways. Use the word "end" or the number "30" either in quotation marks or within dashes, or the symbol ##."
His examples use either -30- or ##.
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Usenet · Answer

[nq:2]Thus, does anyone have a credible cite that says that ... were ending stories with *** to mean "end of story"?[/nq]
[nq:1]http://listserv.dom.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind9508&L=STUMPERS-L&P=R47202[/nq]
Thanks. The problem with that is the author is just saying this is so, without any external citation. The interesting part is this:
"Telegraphy is by its very nature a form of communication that requires confirmation of accuracy and additional marks to indicate things like word counts and the ends of paragraphs or items. It became customary among telegraph operators to use three zeroes to punctuate the end of a long transmission. In American Morse code, the zero is simply a much elongated "dash" (actually two very widely spaced clicks, since this type of code was received as clicks rather than tones) and the three dashes had a characteristic rhythmic pattern.

Three X characters might be used in similar fashion. Whether by misinterpretation of three Xes as the Roman number 30, or by analogy to the rhythmic pattern, the three long dashes were supplanted by the number 30, which in American Morse also has a very catchy rhythm: . . . . (again, the zero is a single long dash.) Writers actually wrote in the "30" at the end of their items to remind the telegrapher to send it that way, and thus a tradition was established.

Eventually, the 30 made its way into the slang of journalism to signify the end of anything: a career, a life, retirement, or a particular publication."
Here he is claiming that telegraphers at times did use *** at times as a prosign to mean end of message. But, unlike that randomhouse.com link I posted, he says that reporters had picked up the 30/*** notation from the telegraphers, rather than the telegraphers picking it up from journalists. Thus this is a question of who was using it first? Only way to know for sure if somewhere out there is a mention of reporters using either/or *** and 30 to mean "end of story" before telegraphy became available.
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-30- used as meaning end of story.

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