The Cost of a Character

As an editor for the Radical History Review, I spend a lot of time counting characters (text characters that is).  Duke University Press, the publisher of the journal, allows a fixed number of journal pages per volume.  Short of typesetting an article, the most accurate way for RHR editors to estimate the length of a given article or entire issue is to count characters (yes, spaces count, and so do footnotes).  Occasionally we have a space crunch toward the end of a volume and the pressure is on.  If there is a huge overage, the game is political, determining which authors might be willing to postpone publication of their piece to a later issue.  If it is a smaller amount, authors and editors are forced to tighten the text or remove/shrink images.  It doesn’t take long before the cutting war becomes a word-by-word battle where every character counts (and the hefty penalty fee assessed by the publisher for overage looms large).  When we begin constructing an issue, the 600,000+ character space seems vast,  but as it comes down to the wire claustrophobia sets in.

Unlike a Twitterer bending to duck a 140-character limit, the journal author/editor can go only so far with creative solutions since the text must adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style and Merriam-Webster Dictionary.  Although the dictionary is growing it doesn’t allow for the creative abbreviations being pioneered by twitterati.  It usually means following Strunk and White’s advice: “Omit useless words.”  Not surprisingly, the intense editing done under the character-limit gun tends to yield excellent results.

As we help our students discover the value that comes along with the frustrations of editing, I think that space constraints can play a valuable role.  When a student shortens a text or tweet, they are employing some of the same skills necessary for communication efficiency in other contexts.

New technologies are not the first to put a price tag on characters.  An Op-Ed in the New York Times over the summer pointed to some humorous abbreviations invented by penny-pinching telegraph senders facing 15-character and 10-word limits.  I am intrigued by the expressions that the editors of the “The Anglo-American Telegraphic Code” (1891) deemed worthy of inclusion.  Some of them are not phrases I see often these days (“can you recommend to me a good female cook,” abbreviated “CRISP”); others are (“taxation is oppressive”, “ORGANISM” for short).

Here is an excerpt, including some other abbreviations you may choose to use in your next tweet:

ABANDONEE Abandoned in a sinking condition
ABETTING Everything depends on the ability with which it is (they are) handled.
ABUSAGE His (their) absence is rather mysterious.
ACESCET Has met with a trifling accident.

I see that this post is already at 2775 characters, so I best stop here.