Why do newspaper reporters end articles with the number 30 or the three-pound-sign symbol ###? No one knows for sure, although that never stopped journalists from debating the origin of this way of ending a story. The practice arose in a bygone era when reporters typed their copy directly onto paper and handed it over to copyboys, and needed a way to indicate the last page in case one was lost somewhere in the process. In 2007, a vestige of this old practice figured in an amusing correction in the New York Times. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “30 at the Ends of Articles”
Hello, you have a way with the words.
Hello, I’m Gordon Clay, and I’m from Hillsborough, Oregon.
Hi, Gordon. Welcome to the show.
Hi, Gordon.
Great to be here.
Yeah, glad to have you. What’s cooking? How can we help?
Well, I’m curious. I get a lot of press releases, and there’s usually a symbol signifying the end of the story.
And most of them seem to be the letters F-I-N, which I assume is Finnish.
But there’s also, some people use the number 30, and also the number sign itself, and it can be anywhere from 1 to 3 of the number signs down at the bottom of the press release.
The pound sign?
And I’m just curious of the origins, and do any of these have a designation other than, or in addition to signifying the end?
Like, is there a special, are the numbers used for something and the 30 is used for something and Finn is used for something else?
Good question.
And a lot of people are wondering about 30 in particular.
Nobody seems to know where that comes from, but it is an old journalist term.
Right.
That goes back to the days when you would, you know, pound out a couple of paragraphs on your piece of paper and yell copy.
And the copy boy would come get it and they would take it directly to the printer.
Because you had to know.
Do you remember that from the 1940s?
Sorry, she knew where I was going.
Yeah, yeah, I can see it coming.
But, yeah, because you had to have a designation that that was the end of what you had written.
Right.
Right, because if a page fell on the floor, you wouldn’t know.
Right.
It might look like the end but not be the end.
Exactly, yeah.
And what’s really funny, Gordon, is that just in the last few years, about five years ago in the New York Times, there was a correction that was just fantastic.
I have to share it with you. The last line of this article about a murder trial originally was, the judge overseeing the case, Justice Plummer E. Lott of Supreme Court, planned to try the case by February 30th.
But they had to run a correction.
And it said, an article misstated the schedule set by a judge for the trial in the case. The trial is expected to begin by February, not by February 30th.
The error occurred when the editor saw the symbol 30 typed at the bottom of the reporter’s article and combined it with the last word February.
February 30th. And the editor didn’t know.
So 30, sometimes with dashes on each side, and sometimes it’s three pound signs or hash marks in a row.
Are there other symbols for the end of the article?
Not that I know.
Well, the one that I see the most is F-I-N.
Okay.
I have not seen that.
So you get this in press releases.
Yes.
Yeah.
This is always in press releases.
That’s funny, because I was taught to do this when I was a cub reporter in the late 1980s.
I’ve seen it in journalism, and it still exists because it’s still a problem.
You’re not 100% sure that the other people, that they’ve gotten everything that you sent.
They need to know that it’s absolutely the end, right?
Yeah.
Right, right.
And oftentimes in the press releases, then there are sources after the 30 or the fin, and those are not supposed to be in the article.
Right.
But they’re backing it up to show that it’s the truth and it’s just not something pulled off of some blog.
What kind of theories do you know, Martha, for where this came from?
Well, some people associate it with some kind of Morse code sign-off among telegraph operators.
And I’ve also seen the suggestion that maybe it’s three capital X’s, you know, the equivalent of three capital X’s, which is Roman numerals for 30.
But the truth is, a journalist just like arguing about it.
Nobody knows.
We don’t really know the origin of it.
But you know what it reminds me of, Gordon?
It reminds me of coding software because you kind of have the same problem.
You have to tell the computer when you are at the end of an expression or the end of a piece of code.
So there’s terminating code that you have to put in there to say, this is the end of these instructions that I’m giving you.
And so it’s remarkably like in that way, like the journalist copy or the press release copy.
You’ve got to tell them the job is finished here.
This is the end.
Very interesting.
Well, Gordon, can we end it now with, you know what? I’m complete for now.
Okay.
Glad to hear it.
Thanks, Gordon.
Thanks for calling.
Bye-bye.
30.
Bye-bye.
877-929-9673 for your questions about language.
Oh, I love this one!
After the journalist (you remember journalism, right?) would hand off the article to the copyboy the next person in line was not the printer, but the typesetter. The typesetter would turn the copy into printable letterpress type using a machine that produced lines of type from hot lead in the proper column width, font, size and spacing. These molded metal lines of type were assembled in galleys. In order to visually separate one story from the next in the galley the typesetter would set the letters XXX centered on a line by itself. This eventually evolved to the number 30 which is, of course, equal to the Roman numeral XXX.
Hash tags are very much in vogue and technology has long ago made 30 unnecessary, however, it is nice to see some traditions continue.
You can take this answer to the bank and put this unsolved mystery to rest.
You probably saw this… Telegrapher Codes. My Dad was a newspaperman from 1939-1986. I wish he were here. I KNOW he could answer this one! Great episode, as always!
This thread reminds me of the following similar end-of-file notation… Among professional mathematicians, who are wont to print after the statements of published theorems their formal proofs (an argument that provides a full justification for the statement). It has become traditional to signal the end of a proof of a theorem with a small black square symbol. This symbol names, like the tombstone, or the “halmos”, after Paul Halmos, a twentienth century mathematician who popularized its use. (See the Wiki page on Tombstone (typography).