ETAOIN SHRDLU
|
|
ETAOIN SHRDLU is the approximate order of frequency of the twelve most commonly used letters in the English language. This is distinct from the letter frequency of dictionary words. Jocularly pronounced it sounds like EH tee oyn SHIRD loo. It is best known as a nonsense phrase that sometimes appeared in print due to a custom of Linotype machine operators. The complete sequence is usually listed as ETAOIN SHRDLU CMFWYP VBGKQJ XZ.
ETAOIN SHRDLU were the first two vertical columns on the left side of the Linotype keyboard, which was arrayed in letter frequency. Linotype operators ran a finger down the lines of keys to temporarily mark a slug of type. Occasionally this would be printed erroneously.
That happened often enough that the phrase is listed in the Oxford English Dictionary and in the Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary.
A documentary about the last issue of the New York Times to be composed in the hot-metal printing process (July 2, 1978) was entitled Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu.
Appearance in fiction and elsewhere
Etaoins is humorously used in Thurber's 1931 Owl in the Attic to indicate the incompetence of the linotyper. In 1942 it was the title of a short story by Fredric Brown about a sentient Linotype machine. Occasionally, the phrase is nonsensical or absurd. Anthony Armstrong's 1945 whimsical short story "Etaoin and Shrdlu" ends "And Sir Etaoin and Shrdlu married and lived so happily ever after that whenever you come across Etaoin's name even today it's generally followed by Shrdlu's". Elmer Rice's 1923 play, The Adding Machine, had Etaoin Shrdlu as a character. It was the name of an irascible bookworm in Walt Kelly's comic strip Pogo.
The phrase was used as the title for a piece by the band Cul-De-Sac on their 4th album Crashes To Its Light, Minutes To Its Fall, in 2000. The band also released a piece by the name of Etaoin Without Shrdlu on a live recording titled Immortality Lessons in 2002.
It was used in 1972 by Terry Winograd as the name for an early artificial-intelligence system in Lisp (see SHRDLU). In Douglas Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach, there is a dialogue between fictional programmer "Eta Oin" and SHRDLU.
See also
External links
- Fun with words - SHRDLU (http://rinkworks.com/words/letterfreq.shtml)
- Straight Dope Article (http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_262a.html)fr:Fréquence d'apparition des lettres en français