Etaoin shrdlu

Top: Etaoin shrdlu appearing in a 1903 publication of The New York Times (third line from the bottom). Bottom: A humorous and intentional example of etaoin shrdlu in a 1916 newspaper.

Etaoin shrdlu (/ˈɛtiˌɔɪnˈʃɜːrdluː/)^[1] is a nonsense phrase that sometimes appeared in print in the days of "hot type" publishing because of a custom of type-casting machine operators. It appeared often enough to become part of newspaper lore.

It is the approximate order of frequency of the 12 most commonly used letters in the English language.^[2]

History

The letters on type-casting machine keyboards (such as Linotype and Intertype) were arranged by letter frequency, so e-t-a-o-i-n s-h-r-d-l-u were the lowercase keys in the first two vertical columns on the left side of the keyboard. When an operator made a mistake in composing, they would often finish the line by running their finger down the first two columns of the keyboard and then start over. Occasionally the faulty line of hot-metal type would be overlooked and be printed erroneously. This happened often enough for "etaoin shrdlu" to be listed in the Oxford English Dictionary and in the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.

A documentary about the last issue of The New York Times to be composed in the hot-metal printing process (2 July 1978) was titled Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu.^[3]

In the early days of computer studies of language, an examination of newspaper text and television news copy included a letter frequency count, followed by a journal article. Irving Fang concluded that the linotype machines got it nearly right, but that the actual frequency of letters in the English language is ETAONI RSHDLC.^[4]

Peter Norvig used the Google Books Ngrams corpus in 2013 to determine the frequencies of use, resulting in the order ETAOIN SRHLDCU.^[5]

Appearance outside typography

A Linotype machine keyboard. It has the following alphabet arrangement twice, once for lower case (the black keys) and once for upper case (the white keys), with the keys in the middle for numbers and symbols: etaoin / shrdlu / cmfwyp / vbgkqj / xz

The phrase has gained enough notability to appear outside typography, including:

Computing

• SHRDLU was used in 1972 by Terry Winograd as the name for an early artificial-intelligence system in Lisp.^[6]
• The ETAOIN SHRDLU Chess Program was written by Garth Courtois Jr. for the Nova 1200 mini-computer, competing in the 6th and 7th ACM North American Computer Chess Championship 1975 and 1976.^[7]
• "Etienne Shrdlu" was used as the name of a character in Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, touch-typing training software from the late 1980s.^[8]
• ETA Systems chief architect Neil Lincoln maintained that the name of the firm derived from the first three letters of a Linotype keyboard.

Literature

• Elmer Rice's 1923 play The Adding Machine includes Shrdlu as a character.^[9]
• In 1942 Etaoin Shrdlu was the title of a short story by Fredric Brown about a sentient Linotype machine. (A sequel, Son of Etaoin Shrdlu: More Adventures in Typer and Space, was written by others in 1981.)^[9]
• Anthony Armstrong's 1945 whimsical short story "Etaoin and Shrdlu" ends "And Sir Etaoin and Shrdlu married and lived so happily ever after that whenever you come across Etaoin's name even today it's generally followed by Shrdlu's".^[9]
• It is the name of a science fiction fanzine edited by Sheldon Lee Glashow & Steven Weinberg^[10]
• Mr. Etaoin is a character – the Abalone newspaper typesetter – in The Circus of Dr. Lao.^[11]
• "Mr. Shrdlu -- Etaoin Shrdlu" is Houn' Dog's response to Pogo's question, "What you say his name is, Houn' Dog?" referencing the author of Webster's Dictionary on page 51 of the first paperback collection of Pogo cartoons, Pogo.
• Thomas Pynchon named a character "Etienne Cherdlu" in his early short story The Secret Integration (1962) (see Slow Learner (1984)).
• Three pieces in The New Yorker magazine were published in 1925, under the pen name Etain Shrdlu.^[12]
• At least one piece in The New Yorker magazine has Etaoin Shrdlu in the title.^[13]

Media

• In the 1950s, etaoin shrdlu was frequently used as a catchphrase in Mad magazine.
• In 1958, the National Press Club (USA) published Shrdlu - An Affectionate Chronicle, a 50-year retrospective of the Club's history.^[14]

Music

• Shrdlu (Norman Shrdlu) is listed as the composer of "Jam Blues", cut 1 on the 1951 Norman Granz produced Jazz album released in 1990 as "Charlie Parker Jam Session". This appears to be a joke on Parker's part as Norman Shrdlu is credited in several Parker (and other) tunes.
• "Etaoin Shrdlu" is the title of the first song on Cul de Sac's 1999 album Crashes to Light, Minutes to Its Fall.

See also

• Filler text
• Lorem ipsum
• Qwerty

References

External links

• Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu at the Internet Movie Database
• "What's the origin of the mysterious phrase etaoin shrdlu?" at The Straight Dope
• Excerpt demonstrating etaoin shrdlu from the film Linotype: The Film at the Internet Movie Database
• Over 100 examples of the phrase used in American newspapers from 1836–1922 at the Library of Congress
• English Letter Frequency Counts: Mayzner Revisited or ETAOIN SRHLDCU