[Fists] Circle-A in Morse Code

[Cheryl W. Ring]

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 - N1EA