| July 2006 | |
Thirty-dash traces history to hot-type era
Thirty-dash. Many of you know the meaning of the thirty-dash. For those of you who do not, here’s a quick lesson in old-time newspaper lingo. Back in the days well before computers and well-well before Compugraphics, the backshops of newspapers were often filled with a crusty crew of sometime-misfits who did the dirty work of putting out a newspaper. These were the men (mostly) whose fingers were almost never cleaned of the printers ink because it had become ingrained in their skin. They wore aprons with a pica pole sticking out of a sleeved pocket, right at their quick disposal. In another pocket was the little metal squeezer with a fine edge that allowed them to gain leverage in the tight spaces between lines spit forth by the Linotype. I was fortunate enough to have been exposed to the last vestiges of the hot-type era. Lynn Brisendine and I suffered through the transformation at The Hereford Brand from hot type to cold type. The backshop walked out on the owners when they learned new cold type machines had been ordered. Breezy (Brisendine’s nickname) already had a good working knowledge of the backshop, having launched his newspaper career there. He was familiar with pigs (of the heavy metal type), of type sprites, of pied chases, of working with ems and ens and those type mites every newcomer had to learn about from the backshop crew. Stories had to be set by hand, early-on one word at a time then eventually one line at a time. This was done by the hand compositor in the backshop. It was a slow and tedious process and it was considered, I am told, a good day’s work when the compositor was able to do 30 inches of type. He would declare “thirty for me” and call it a day. It declared that point as “the end.” The thirty-dash eventually carried over to the upfront folks who used it to indicate to the typesetter that the point the -30- showed up was the end of the story and the typesetter would, on a Linotype, throw in a line of dashes so the printer would know that was the end of the story. The thirty-dash also made its way into the personal epitaph and frequently was used by newspaper associations as the heading under which obituaries were placed. So, in a way, you might call this the beginning of the end. But let’s hope not. That sounds too ominous. With that little bit of background, you get the gist of the title of this column — Thirty-dash. It probably has been used by others who penned this column in the past, but I do not believe they would mind me pilfering it again for a few months. I don’t want to find myself preaching to the choir in this spot. I hope it can be used as a space for casual conversation interwoven with bits of usable information. At times, it will serve as a platform to encourage participation in this organization and to solicit your support for efforts that are crucial to this industry. There are several important things we will look at in the coming months, but the first one I will address in the next column will be our committees and their functions and purpose. It is important that we use these committees throughout the year and get something out of them. This will be done with specialized e-mail list servers in which members will exchange ideas and information and kick things back and forth that need to be addressed. This will hopefully create a more useful dialogue among members and yield ideas that can be put into practice rather than being set on a shelf and forgotten. At least that is our intention and hope. Until next month. —30— |
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