"There are countless horrible things happening all over the world and horrible people prospering, but we must never allow them to disturb our equanimity or deflect us from our sacred duty to sabotage and annoy them whenever possible." -Auberon Waugh
Saturday, March 2, 2024
An odd little corner in the history of newspaper printing
I had never heard of this.
Probably just a coincidence, but the name of the chief foreign correspondent of Paco World News Daily (PWND) happens to be Etaoin Shrdlu.
I was actively involved in my high school journalism program, and thus was on the school newspaper for most of those 4 years. We had tours of local and regional newspapers, to see how they operated, all aspects of it, including their printing. I also delivered newspaper during high school. So, you might say, I was immersed in the journalism culture.
And then, too, newspapers were the primary "social media" of the time, so I read them, for pleasure, and for school.
And I never heard of "Etaoin Shrdlu" until now. Perhaps I just forgot about him.
OTOH, I graduated high school in 1975 (yeah, that dates me), and offset printing was pretty common by then. So maybe old Etaoin Shrdlu had already passed by then.
Now that's funny. Back in the 90's one of my co-workers was tasked with writing a paper on management practices and she was getting frustrated because she kept having to revise it because of the fickle whims of "the 5th floor." She was grumbling about the most recent thing and I suggested that she just write the paper her way and use a placeholder word insert-current-management-buzzword-here and right before it goes to print do a global replace of the placeholder word. She loved it and it worked out great. Later on I created my own autocorrect nonsense words to inset large blocks of text that I repeatedly needed for letters I had to send out as part of my job. My own take on etaoin shrdlu.
I first encountered the name in a science fiction story by, I think, Fredric Brown many years ago. Of course, linotype machines having gone the way of the dodo, Etaoin Shrdlu has long since been replaced in the public consciousness by QWERTY.
I was actively involved in my high school journalism program, and thus was on the school newspaper for most of those 4 years. We had tours of local and regional newspapers, to see how they operated, all aspects of it, including their printing. I also delivered newspaper during high school. So, you might say, I was immersed in the journalism culture.
ReplyDeleteAnd then, too, newspapers were the primary "social media" of the time, so I read them, for pleasure, and for school.
And I never heard of "Etaoin Shrdlu" until now. Perhaps I just forgot about him.
OTOH, I graduated high school in 1975 (yeah, that dates me), and offset printing was pretty common by then. So maybe old Etaoin Shrdlu had already passed by then.
A pity, that. I would have enjoyed meeting him.
Now that's funny. Back in the 90's one of my co-workers was tasked with writing a paper on management practices and she was getting frustrated because she kept having to revise it because of the fickle whims of "the 5th floor." She was grumbling about the most recent thing and I suggested that she just write the paper her way and use a placeholder word insert-current-management-buzzword-here and right before it goes to print do a global replace of the placeholder word. She loved it and it worked out great. Later on I created my own autocorrect nonsense words to inset large blocks of text that I repeatedly needed for letters I had to send out as part of my job.
ReplyDeleteMy own take on etaoin shrdlu.
I first encountered the name in a science fiction story by, I think, Fredric Brown many years ago. Of course, linotype machines having gone the way of the dodo, Etaoin Shrdlu has long since been replaced in the public consciousness by QWERTY.
ReplyDelete