In movies, those treading a telegram aloud will always say "stop" instead of pausing at the end of a sentence to indicate a period. This is supposed to be dramatic, but it's stupid and corny. Hal
Actually, there was a very good reason why the telegram said “stop”, and not just a pause at the end of the sentence, and I would have thought that you already knew that, @Hal Pollner . The telegraph messages were sent in Morse code, which is a series of dots and dashes, so there was no way to simply put a dot at the end of the sentence, so they just wrote out stop in Morse code. Here is what I found online : One take on the STOP in telegrams to indicate a period is that in WWI that practice became widespread in telegrams containing military orders, after a few were misunderstood, and the practice continued generally. Another is that STOP was free, but the Morse Code for punctuation was charged for. Some references refer to charging for punctuation at a premium rate, so using words for punctuation marks was cheaper. And STOP is four characters; the Morse Code for a period is di-dah-di-dah-di-dah, six “characters.”
You have to pay for a period, so instead of being charged for a lousy dot, people began using "stop" in order to pay for a full word. I don't know whey they didn't just write the word period.
For a time, and perhaps yet, the period was referred to as a stop, as that is its function. I don't know whether that was the result of its use in telegraphy messages or whether that was the reason it was used, however.
I knew the Morse Code, as I had to pass it to get my Ham License (N6CEY) years ago. I still remember it! Thanks anyway, Yvonne, Lois, and Ken! Signed: DI DI DI DIT.....DI DAH.....DI DAH DI DIT
That's a Horrible way to learn Morse, Bess! I know it's not your idea, but you chose to post it anyway, which is fine! Harold