aggienaut | 30 of 30

- 9 - This will conclude another year of 30 in 30. Its been exciting as always, and I'm glad to see a new crew of enthusiastic participants seems to have developed. I have one last challenge now for these intrepid participants: find more participants for next year! =D
Anyway, either this evening or tomorrow I'll post a more thorough review and wrap up of this year's 30 in 30. And thereafter, I still have blog ideas to burn! But in the mean time, I still have one more entry to write!
###

   And speaking of "###," lets talk about THAT. I prefer to end press releases (or signify a complete subject change) with ### because, well, precisely because it doesn't mean anything. However, as you probably know if you're involved in either writing or receiving press releases and such, the traditional final line of a press release, to mean "end," is "- 30 -".
   Google "why do press releases end in '30'?" or any other phrase targetting the that question and you'll get a whole slew of sites confidently telling you its because during the civil war telegraphers ended their messeges with 'XXX,' and the geniuses back at HQ simply translated that as roman numerals for 30. This sounded pretty dumb to me so I did some more sleuthing. And yes, that is absolutely completely incorrect.
   Which is really shocking really, since its a question deeply embedded in the middle of the industry of JOURNALISM, which is supposed to be the occupation of digging up facts and getting to the truth of things.
   The correct answer, as it happens, is that "30" means "end" in Phillips Code, a telegraphic shorthand which substituted numbers for common phrases. It also invented a number of acronyms, for example "SCOTUS," the now commonly used acronym for Supreme Court Of The United States, was invented by the Phillips Code.

   Shame on you journalism profession.

Picture of the Day / Year Ago Today

Epic Roadtrip 2007: Day 14 in Davis!

- 30 -

30 of 30 - XXX