The sequence of letters, Etaoin Shrdlu, appeared occasionally in newspapers many years ago, leading some to conclude that these letters were the name of some mysterious person. The reason for its appearance, however, was no mystery: Etaoin Shrdlu are the letters produced by running the finger down the first two vertical rows of the Linotype machine keyboard. The Linotype was the brand name for a printing device invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler in 1886 and first used in the New York Tribune. The text line was cast with molten lead when the operator keyed in and finished a line of text. Etaoin Shrdlu was used as a temporary marking slug or to indicate that a typographical mistake was made that required resetting of the cast. Linotype operators used this sequence because it was so easy to make on the keyboard. Sometimes the sequence inadvertently made it into print. Linotype typesetters were ubiquitous in the newspaper and industry (and were even used on the battlefields of WWI) up to about 1960, after which they were replaced with photocomposition. Etaoin Shrdlu likewise disappeared from print, except for the name on the occasional novel, comic strip, or science fact book.
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ETAOIN SHRDLU
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ETAOIN SHRDLU is the approximate order of frequency of the twelve most commonly used letters in the English language, best known as a nonsense phrase that sometimes appeared in print in the days of "hot type" publishing due to a custom of Linotype machine operators.
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Linotype history
The letters on Linotype keyboards were arranged by letter frequency, so ETAOIN SHRDLU were the first two vertical columns on the left side of the keyboard. Linotype operators who had made a typing error could not easily go back to delete it, and had to finish the line before they could eject the slug and re-key a new one. Since the line with the error would be discarded and hence its contents didn't matter, the quickest way to finish the line was to run a finger down the keys, creating this nonsense phrase.
If the slug with the error made it as far as the compositors, the distinctive set of letters served to quickly identify it for removal. Occasionally, however, the phrase would be overlooked and be printed erroneously. This happened often enough that the ETAOIN SHRDLU is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary and in the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
It also became part of the lore of newspapers. A documentary about the last issue of The New York Times to be composed in the hot-metal printing process (2 July 1978) was entitled Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu.[1]
Appearance outside typography
Computing
- SHRDLU was used in 1972 by Terry Winograd as the name for an early artificial-intelligence system in Lisp.
- The ETA esoteric programming language uses the letters E, T, A, O, I, N, S and H as commands, and ignores the rest.
Fiction
Etaoin Shrdlu, or a portion of the phrase, is the name of a character in many works of fiction, including:
- Elmer Rice's 1923 play The Adding Machine
- Charles G. Finney's The Circus of Dr. Lao (1935), where Mr. Etaoin is a proofreader.
- Max Shulman's novel of college life, Barefoot Boy with Cheek (1943).
- Walt Kelly's comic strip Pogo, where it is a bookworm.
- A short story in Thomas Pynchon's Slow Learner compilation (the name used is Etienne Shrdlu).
- In 2005, the web comic Girl Genius (two characters, Eotain and Shurdlu).
- In the Black Hole Travel Agency novels by Jack McKinney, as the author of the Worlds Abound science fiction novels.
- Cartoonist Robert Crumb's stories for "Weirdo".
- The novel Psychoshop by Roger Zelazny and Alfred Bester.
- The titular character of the Guild Wars webcomic Etaoin's Tales.[2]
It also is used in fiction in other ways, including:
- Etaoins is used in James Thurber's 1931 Owl in the Attic to indicate the incompetence of a Linotyper.
- In 1942 it was the title of a short story by Fredric Brown about a sentient Linotype machine. (A sequel, Son of Etaoin Shrdlu: More Adventures in Typer and Space, was written by others in 1981.)
- Anthony Armstrong's 1945 whimsical short story "Etaoin and Shrdlu" ends "And Sir Etaoin and Shrdlu married and lived so happily ever after that whenever you come across Etaoin's name even today it's generally followed by Shrdlu's".
- Emile Mercier, Australian cartoonist of the 1950s, would sometimes incorporate the word Shrdlu into his text.
- Ogden Nash's poem Peekabo, I Almost See You includes this description of a visit to an optometrist:
- And you look at his chart and it says SHRDLU QWERTYOP, and you say Well, why SHRDLU QWERTYOP? and he says one set of glasses won't do. / You need two.
- The Harvard Lampoon's The Lord of the Rings parody Bored of the Rings (1969) includes the phrase as part of some Elven poetry: "O Nasa O Ucla! O Etaoin Shrdlu! O Escrow Beryllium! Pandit J. Nehru!"
- It is drawn in block letters in Rex Miller's book Slob by detective Jack Eichord, as a way to concentrate on the facts of the "Lonely Hearts Killer" case.
- Etaoin Shrdlu was mentioned in the novel Contact by Carl Sagan.
Non-fiction
- The writer Denys Parsons wrote several books compiling misprints from publications (It Must be True, Can It Be True?, etc.) in which a character called Gobfrey Shrdlu (with a Welsh wife called Cmfwyp and a son called Etaoin) was supposedly responsible for all such occurrences.
- Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979) includes a dialogue between fictional programmer "Eta Oin" and the artificial-intelligence program SHRDLU.
Music
- In The Complete Charlie Parker On Verve, four titles — "JATP Blues", "Blues For Norman", "Jam Blues" and "The Opener" — are credited to Shrdlu, and "The Closer" is credited to Etaoin. Etaoin is also credited as the composer for "Blues" on the original 1944 10" LP Jazz at the Philharmonic (Mercury/Clef MG35005).
- The phrase was the title of a piece by the band Cul de Sac on their 2000 album Crashes To Light, Minutes To Its Fall. The band also released a piece by the name of Etaoin Without Shrdlu on a 2002 live recording titled Immortality Lessons.
Miscellaneous
- Herb Caen claimed that the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper was nicknamed the Etaoin Shrdlu because of its questionable production standards.
- In the videogame The Castle of Dr. Brain, there's a point where the player is given a metallic plaque, with the inscription "E Ta Oins Hrdlu". It serves as a guide to resolve some language-oriented riddles.
- A blog by editors of the McClatchy newspaper chain is called Etaoin Shrdlu. [3]
Other languages
- The French version, "elaoin sdrétu", was used as the name of a robot in the Petit Noël comics of André Franquin.
See also
References
External links
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