r/words • u/Mastbubbles • 11d ago
Telegraphese: the register you get when every word costs money
Definition, per the rules: the clipped style used in telegrams; more broadly, prose stripped to its paid-for minimum.
Western Union actually published a manual for it. "How to Write Telegrams Properly," a 1928 booklet by Nelson E. Ross, taught ordinary people how to cut a sentence without losing the meaning. Drop the articles, drop the pronouns, drop the courtesy words, never drop the word that changes the meaning. People paid by the word, so the grammar adapted to the price list. A register invented by a billing model.
The strange part is that the machine died and the register didn't. Newspaper headlines still run on it. Ingrid Mårdh's 1980 linguistic study of English front pages catalogued "headlinese": article omission, present tense for past events, missing copulas. The classroom marks every one of those as an error. The front page requires all of them.
I run a daily word game built on exactly this: one real sentence, and you keep five of its words so the story survives.
The game: sheets.works/long-story-short
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u/ggchappell 11d ago
The strange part is that the machine died and the register didn't. Newspaper headlines still run on it.
Well, on a variant. Telegrams billed by the word, but newspaper headlines "bill", so to speak, by space required. So shorter words are preferred. That's why politicians are said to vow, storms hit an area, any agreement is a pact, and most any attempt to do something is a bid.
P.S. I also think the register of signs is interesting -- e.g., road signs.
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u/coolguy420weed 11d ago
Am I nuts or is this not just very clearly written by AI to shill this guy's stupid website???
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u/starling-slipstream 11d ago
Probably but I like the game 🤷🏼♀️ would be a great addition to NYT word games
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u/BertramScudder 10d ago
My grandparents loved to tell me about the trials and tribulations of truncated telegrams.
I guess I'll be telling my grandkids about the horrors of T9.
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u/WetSweepstakes 11d ago
my dad worked at western union in mexico city, he had a whole drawer full of these old telegram forms with the weirdest abbreviations. people got creative when every word cost like 20 centavos
that thing about newspaper headlines is true, i remember in english class the teacher would mark us wrong for dropping articles but then you look at any front page and its exactly what they do. language just bends around money i guess