"The End"?

[Pippi]

Hi Beth, In my assigments and submissions, I never use "The End." I think it's just understood and optional.

[Beth Consugar]

A guest is reading this.

Talk about catacombs.

Shauna, Honey, di you drag a few guests into the catacombs earlier today? there seem to be a few wandering around down here...

[Beth Consugar]

It was a joke.

Dude, what happened to your humor tonight?

[Rick Starkey]

What ever happened to:

   ###

    or

  -30-

   or was that
 
   -33-

[jfields]

I never did "the end," but I did use -30- for a long time because it was requried in the age of the dinosaurs when I was working for a newspaper. Although most working writers don't put "the end," I actually know some who do. I suspect editors don't think much about it at all.

I tell you though, I would never ever ever do it with a really dinky micro publisher or one of the one-man-band magazines. I knew someone who ALWAYS put "the end." She had always put "the end." She was determined to do it forever. Then one day she sent something to a micropublisher (because it was a poetry collections and basically that's who publishes those). The publisher did a decent job making it into a book....except that the last poem in the book had an extra line to it -- "the end." Which made the poem hysterical since it was kind of a dark-ish poem and when you read it with a last line of "the end," it changed the whole meaning of the poem and made it sound like it was about suicide.

So anyway, my story for the morning.

[Rick Starkey]

I never did "the end," but I did use -30- for a long time because it was requried in the age of the dinosaurs when I was working for a newspaper. Although most working writers don't put "the end," I actually know some who do. I suspect editors don't think much about it at all.

I tell you though, I would never ever ever do it with a really dinky micro publisher or one of the one-man-band magazines. I knew someone who ALWAYS put "the end." She had always put "the end." She was determined to do it forever. Then one day she sent something to a micropublisher (because it was a poetry collections and basically that's who publishes those). The publisher did a decent job making it into a book....except that the last poem in the book had an extra line to it -- "the end." Which made the poem hysterical since it was kind of a dark-ish poem and when you read it with a last line of "the end," it changed the whole meaning of the poem and made it sound like it was about suicide.

So anyway, my story for the morning.

That would be wild, adding deeper meaning to the poem.

Anyone have any idea why they used to use -30-?  Why the number 30?

[KatieC]

I never did "the end," but I did use -30- for a long time because it was requried in the age of the dinosaurs when I was working for a newspaper. Although most working writers don't put "the end," I actually know some who do. I suspect editors don't think much about it at all.

I tell you though, I would never ever ever do it with a really dinky micro publisher or one of the one-man-band magazines. I knew someone who ALWAYS put "the end." She had always put "the end." She was determined to do it forever. Then one day she sent something to a micropublisher (because it was a poetry collections and basically that's who publishes those). The publisher did a decent job making it into a book....except that the last poem in the book had an extra line to it -- "the end." Which made the poem hysterical since it was kind of a dark-ish poem and when you read it with a last line of "the end," it changed the whole meaning of the poem and made it sound like it was about suicide.

So anyway, my story for the morning.

I swear, Jan has the BEST stories!