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Joined: Dec 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
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It *was the most common letters, in order, once. It was also the order of letters on a linotype machine, the device that they used to use to set type for newspapers. The story is that if the type setter discovered some gross error that the proofreader had missed, he'd run his finger across that row and etaionshrdlu would appear in the copy. He'd send it back and it would get fixed. Only sometimes it wouldn't get fixed and the newspaper would go out onto the street with a line like:
President Hoover today announced that he etaoinshrdlu…
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210 |
thought I heard my ears ringing... 
formerly known as etaoin...
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
President Hoover today announced that he etaoinshrdlu
Augh--reading this made me realize that I now think of etaoin as a person!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
empathy of purportion.
Oh, musick--I love you! What a wonderful word!
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 7,210 |
Augh--... I now think of etaoin as a person!
sorry, Jackie... [pout]
formerly known as etaoin...
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Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 11,613 |
Hey, you chose the screen name! I can't help that I've personalized it! To me, etaoin is now you, not a line o' type! 
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624
Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
As Faldo the Great (doesn't that just make you think of a circus clown?) points out, the letters etaoin are the five most common in the alphabet. Subsequent research has cast doubt on everything following that, so shurdlu may or may not be the right order (or letters) for the second five most used. Depends who's counting, I guess. Mergenthaler fell for it hook, line and sinker anyway, and I, as a machine typographer (i.e. linotype operator) had to live with that for ten years on linos. On the linotype machine (hear that soap-box scraping across the floor to the front of the room), the first two columns on the left-hand and right-hand keyboard sections consisted of those letters, ie: e s c v x
S t h m b z
P a r f g fi
A o d w k fl
C i l y q ffi
E n u - - - ? Memory lapse after 20 years!
constitutes the first section of the keyboard. The right-hand section of the board had more or less the same layout, but in capital letters, and the middle keypad had 25 "other" characters, the exact mixture depending on the font that was being used.
As was pointed out above (prolly Faldo the Great again) you would sometimes see a line of type in a column that had something like "and the weatetaoin shrdlu shurdlu etaion". What would happen would be that the operator (comme moi) would have either typed the wrong words first or for some other reason decided that the line wasn't worth completing.
Rather than take the matrices out of the assembler by hand and putting them back on the distributor bar (which was called "dissing the mats" and took time and effort), you'd just complete the line by running a finger down the first two columns of the left hand keyboard, pressing the spacebar in between. The spacebar caused something called a spaceband to fall down between the two sets of matrices.
The spaceband was two pieces of high tensile steel joined together by a tongue and groove arrangement. One was short, and sat between the matrices in the assembler, the other was tapered from very thin to about quarter of an inch wide. This was pushed up on the slide (the thin piece) in the mould to force the matrices that formed the words together, and to provide proportional spacing.
The operator (moi, encore) SHOULD have thrown the line back into the pot when it was dropped into the stick. Failing that, the proof readers SHOULD have noted the etaoin/shrdlu lines in the stick of type on the proof and marked them for removal. The stone hand (compositor) SHOULD have removed the line. But sometimes that didn't happen, et voila! etaoin shrdlu's your uncle!
HTH!
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Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803
Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Dec 2000
Posts: 13,803 |
Faldo the Great (doesn't that just make you think of a circus clown?)
You'll think I'm a circus clown when I saw you in two.
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 48
newbie
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OP
newbie
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 48 |
Dear Capfka:
dissing the mats
That would be a cool title!
When I saw:
---e s c v x
S--t h m b z
P--a r f g fi
A--o d w k fl
C--i l y q ffi
E--n u - - -
I thought it was going to be an acrostic poem, but then it wasn't. Or is it?
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Joined: Jun 2002
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 1,624 |
You'll think I'm a circus clown when I saw you in two.
Do clowns do magic tricks now, or are you thinking about doing a remake of the "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre"?
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Joined: May 2003
Posts: 48
newbie
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OP
newbie
Joined: May 2003
Posts: 48 |
Some years back, I read a wonderful book on codes and cryptography, but can't recall its name just now. I believe they listed "etaonirsh" as the nine most common letters in the English language, in that order.
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