[Ads-l] FYI: FYI

ADSGarson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Tue Jan 31 21:56:50 UTC 2023


Elisabeth Ribbans found a wonderful citation. Thanks for sharing this
discovery, GAT.
The crucial text in the “Salt Lake Telegram” containing “Fyi” has been
clipped by eribbans on the newspapers.com website.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/116301393/fyi-1915/

The article can be accessed without a paywall via Utah Digital Newspapers here:

https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/details?id=19357859&q=%22for+your+information%22&

The far left margin of the article is missing. So some letters are not
visible. I made some guesses for the missing letters.

Date: December 19, 1915
Newspaper: Salt Lake Telegram
Newspaper Location: Salt Lake City, Utah
Article: How is Business? Business Is Good
Author: T. DeWitt Foster
Quote Page 9, Column 1
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt. Far left margin is not shown in the digital clipping;
hence, some text is conjectural; see the digital clipping for the
original data]

“Fyi, business is good.” Now that
first little word in this sentence is
not gleaned from the language of the
Fiji islanders or any other of of the
South sea natives, but it is just a
little thing which saves space on the
telegraph message to telegraph edi-
tors. Fyi, jolted me hard when first
it struck me and for many minutes
I pondered and wondered and then
wired back that it could not be found
in the book. But it's very, very sim-
ple. See Fyi, means for your infor-
mation, so if I had said that in the
first place the sentence would have
read “For your information business
is good.”

[End conjectural excerpt]

Garson

On Tue, Jan 31, 2023 at 10:03 AM George Thompson
<george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
>
> OED
>
> Originally *U.S.*
>
>  *A.* *phr*
>
>   For your information (typically preceding or following an explanatory
> statement).
>
> 1941    *Washington Post* 27 Apr. 5/3   ‘FYI’ titles this new program for
> the Mutual network... The letters mean ‘For Your Information’—a series
> detailing how the United States is combating sabotage and espionage.
>
>
>
> The website of The Guardian newspaper this morning (January 31) has an
> article on the technical language of journalism.
>
> "The perils of using journalist jargon outside the newsroom."
>
> Elisabeth Ribbans <https://www.theguardian.com/profile/elisabethribbans>.
>
>
> The article concludes:
> For your information
>
> As a postscript, I was fascinated when reading Evans’ glossary [*] to find,
> just below “furniture”, an entry for “FYI”. He explained “for your
> information” was a wire service abbreviation. It had never occurred to me
> that this initialism, familiar from text messages and work emails, had its
> origins in news reporting. With help from archivists at Associated Press
> (AP) and Reuters, and a willing executive at the UPI news agency, I have
> been on its trail.
>
> The earliest reference I can find is a 1915 cutting from the Salt Lake
> Telegram newspaper, where a business journalist dropped “FYI” into an
> article, then explained its meaning to readers, adding: “It’s just a little
> thing that saves space on a telegraph message”. (In those days telegraph
> companies charged by the word.) But he complained it “jolted” him when he
> first saw it, and that it was not “in the book”.
>
> The book may have been Phillips Telegraphic Code
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Code#:~:text=The%20Phillips%20Code%20is%20a,desk%20staff%20would%20commonly%20use.>,
> first published in 1879 to assist the rapid transmission of press reports
> from wire services to client newspapers. Francesca Pitaro, archivist at AP,
> kindly checked the 1914 edition and found no mention. Did the abbreviation
> arrive only in 1915, or did it spring independently? If we find out, I’ll
> report back; just FYI.
>
> * Harold Evans’ five-volume Manual of English, Typography and Layout,
> published in 1972, has an extensive glossary
>
> GAT
>
> --
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998.
>
> But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
> your lowly tomb. . .
> L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112
>
> The Trump of Doom -- also known as The Dunghill Toadstool.  (Here's a
> picture of his great-grandfather.)
> http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


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