Telegram style

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Not to be confused with Telegraphic speech.
This telegram was sent by Orville Wright in December 1903 from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, following the first successful aeroplane flight.

Telegram style, telegraph style, telegraphic style or telegraphese[1] describes a clipped way of writing that attempts to abbreviate words and pack as much information into the shortest possible number of words and/or characters.

It originated in the telegraph age when telecommunication consisted only of short messages transmitted by hand over the telegraph wire. The telegraph companies charged for their service by the number of words in a message, with a maximum of 15 characters per word in a plain language telegram, and 10 per word in one in code. The style developed to minimize costs but still convey the message clearly and unambiguously.

Related but distinct, is the historical practice of using abbreviations and code words to compress the meaning of phrases into a small set of characters for ease of transmission over a telegraph, a device for transmitting electrical impulses used for communications, introduced from 1839 onwards. The related term cablese describes the style of press messages sent uncoded, but in a highly condensed, Hemingwayesque style, over submarine communications cables. In the U.S. Foreign Service, before the advent of broadband telecommunications, cablese referred to condensed telegraphic messaging that made heavy use of abbreviations and avoided use of definite or indefinite articles, punctuation, and other words unnecessary for comprehension of the message.

A characteristic is the use of the word STOP for a full stop character:

eg t-gram style stop

Example

Orville Wright's telegram of December 17, 1903 about the first powered flight.

Success four flights thursday morning all against twenty one mile wind started from Level with engine power alone average speed through air thirty one miles longest 57 seconds inform Press home Christmas . Orevelle Wright

Antecedents

Before the telegraph age military dispatches from overseas were made by letters transported by rapid sailing ships. Clarity and concision were always important in such correspondence, military men having little liking for time-consuming reading.

The shortest telegram in the English language was from the Irish writer Oscar Wilde. He was living in Paris and he cabled his publisher in Britain to see how his new book was doing. The message read: "?" The publisher cabled back: "!".[2] This telegram exchange has also been attributed to Victor Hugo.[3]

The shortest resignation telegram in English is believed to be the one sent by comedian Lenny Lower to Consolidated Press. The message read: "Upstick job arsewise"

Telegraphic coded expressions

Through the history of telegraphy, very many dictionaries of telegraphese, codes or ciphers were developed, each serving to minimise the number of characters or words which needed to be transmitted in order to impart a message; the drivers for this economy were, for telegraph operators, the resource cost and limited bandwidth of the system; and for the consumer, the cost of sending messages.

Examples of telegraphic coded expressions, taken from The Adams Cable Codex, Tenth Edition, 1896 are:

  • Emolument — Think you had better not wait
  • Emotion — Think you had better wait until -
  • Emotional — Think you had better wait and sail -
  • Empaled — Think well of party mentioned
  • Empanel — This is a matter of great importance.

and from The A.B.C. Universal Commercial Electric Telegraphic Code

  • Nalezing — Do only what is absolutely necessary
  • Nalime — Will only do what is absolutely necessary
  • Nallary — It is not absolutely necessary, but it would be an advantage
  • Naloopen — It is not absolutely necessary, but well worth the outlay

Other languages

In Japanese, telegrams are printed using the katakana script, one of the few instances in which this script is used for entire sentences.

In some ways, "telegram style" was the precursor to the modern language abbreviations employed in "texting" or the use of short message standard (SMS) services such as Twitter. On telegrams, space was at a premium—economically speaking—and abbreviations were used as a matter of necessity.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Alred, Brusaw, and Oliu. Handbook of Technical Writing, Seventh Edition. New York, New York: St. Martins Press, 2003., p.522
  2. ↑ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6494297/Ten-famous-telegrams.html
  3. ↑ Roberts, Sam. "Dot-Dot-Dot, Dash-Dash-Dash, No More". The New York Times. Retrieved 2006-02-12. 

Photo gallery

  • President Ho Chi Minh to President Truman 1946

  • Telegram of 21 June 1916 from David Lloyd George, Minister of Munitions, to Joseph Watson, Chairman of Barnbow Amatol shell-filling factory.

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