A Plate Of Grapes

During my weekly golf outing this past Sunday, someone made this quip about the olde tyme telegraph as their ball was rolling towards the hole, “roll roll roll STOP I said STOP STOP” or something to that effect. To which my other golfing partner said, “why did they say STOP? Wouldn’t it have been easier to just use a period?” (or maybe I’m making that last part up as a transition tool… I can’t remember).

Way back when, if you were sending a telegraph, you got a large number of words included in your fee. Punctuation, however, was extra. So, instead of using periods, they had the operators just type STOP.