Telegram style, telegraph style, telegraphic style or telegraphese describes a clipped way of writing that attempts to abbreviate words and pack as much information into the shortest possible number of words and or characters.
It originated in the telegraph age when telecommunication consisted only of short messages transmitted by hand over the telegraph wire. The telegraph companies charged for their service by the number of words in a message. The style developed to minimize costs but still convey the message clearly and unambiguously.
Related but distinct, is the historical practice of using abbreviations and code words to compress the meaning of phrases into a small set of characters for ease of transmission over a telegraph, a device for transmitting electrical impulses used for communications, introduced from 1839 onwards. The related term cablese describes the style of press messages sent uncoded, but in a highly condensed, Hemingwayesque style, over submarine communications cables. In the U.S. Foreign Service, before the advent of broadband telecommunications, cablese referred to condensed telegraphic messaging that made heavy use of abbreviations and avoided use of definite or indefinite articles, punctuation, and other words unnecessary for comprehension of the message.
A characteristic is the use of the word STOP for a full stop character:
eg t-gram style stop
Read more about Telegram Style: Example, Antecedents, Telegraphic Coded Expressions, Other Languages, See Also
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“We are often struck by the force and precision of style to which hard-working men, unpracticed in writing, easily attain when required to make the effort. As if plainness and vigor and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the deer, or the roots of the pine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)