The Press: Etaoin Shrdlu

Newspaper readers occasionally encounter in the day’s news the following cryptogram: “etaoin shrdlu etaoin shrdlu etaoin shrdlu.” It is obviously some sort of typographical error, but what must have puzzled many an alert layman is the regularity of the error’s spelling. It always, somehow, turns into “etaoin shrdlu.”

Last week, noticing that the Literary Digest had reprinted an “etaoin shrdlu” line, apparently as a joke but without bothering to explain the mystery to its readers, the ever-practical New York World explained editorially for laymen what every newsman knows.

When a linotype operator makes an error he has to complete that line of type before he can make a new line. The easiest thing for him to do is to run his fingers down the first two vertical rows of his keyboard. The result is the emergence of a line containing “etaoin shrdlu.” And when the operator forgets to pluck the faulty line from the mould, “etaoin shrdlu” gets into print. So often has “etaoin shrdlu” appeared with a “Mr.” prefixed, that Mr. Etaoin Shrdlu has really become a famed press personage. He has a relative who dwells on his right hand in the third vertical row on a linotype machine, young Mr. Cmfwyp. The family is completed by boyish Vbgkqj and tiny Xz, whose name trails off strangely into typographic symbols.