[CW] New Morse code character

[David J. Ring, Jr.]

The use of QUERY in traffic was identical to that of the Armed Forces, and
Commercial morse as well as commercial land line.

As you remember from your days at the matinee, telegrams sometimes sounded
very funny.

ARRIVING TUESDAY STOP STOP ARGUING STOP LOVE =
DAD

The "word" for "period" was STOP, like wise "question mark" was QUERY,
"comma" was COMMA.

I even remember they had a abreviation for "The Punctuation Counts" - I
think it was ITP or ITB, I forget which.

I found this on a web page - and he cites Neal's Telegraph Office, but I
guess that is out of order right now...

One peculiarity of telegram writing was the use of the word "STOP" in place
of a period. This practice began because telegrams usually contained no
punctuation. If they were to have punctuation, the sender was charged the
same rate for a punctuation mark as for a word, and furthermore, the
punctuation might have been lost because of the low quality of the typing
devices that printed the message. Hence, typically, punctuation, if needed,
was spelled out, and in the case of a period, the shorter word "STOP" was
adopted.

73

David Ring
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alan W. (QSL)" <n5lf@qsl.net>
To: <cw@mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Thursday, December 11, 2003 8:53 PM
Subject: Re: [CW] New Morse code character


Well, the new (proposed) character for @ is Ok with me.  I'll just consider
AT to be my "cut number" for [AC].  The IARU's buring need for a new @
character probably shows that many of them are so out of step that they
don't realize that we already solved it ourselves with AT.

Besides, I can ignore it like I do all the other punctuation I never learned
HI HI.

As to NTS messages & efficiency:  We already have QUERY, which is much
longer than "?."  I bet using QUERY was for the benefit of the voice ops &
not for us.  As for DOT, we now have are 3 kinds of periods for traffic
handling:  The R (decimal), X (sentence period), and DOT (the Internet
period).

So, to my fellow CW Traffic Hounds, I offer this Gracie Allen quote:

   "Hi! I'm Grace. But my friends call me Gracie for short."

I'll still call her Gracies for "short."

73 es dit dit y'all

Alan W. N5LF
N5LF AT QSL DOT NET


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