Telegraphese

[Rudolph C Troike]

One of the classic gems of telegraphese comes from the fact that telegrams
were printed entirely in capital letters, erasing the information encoded
in upper vs lower case. A famous Chinese linguist at UC Berkeley, Y.R.
Chao, and his wife were coming to the U of Chicago by train for a visit,
and sent word ahead by telegram to the linguist who was to meet their
train:

        CHAOS ARRIVING AT 5:00.


        Rudy