SPELLING ECONOMY.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXXII, Issue 2765, 21 August 1931, Page 8

SPELLING ECONOMY.

NEW TELEPHONE DIRECTORY. s ' ART OF ABBREVIATION. Brevity is the essence of modern business and the Post and Telegraph Department has certainly ; achieved a triumph in this direction in the latest issue of the telephone directory. Previously, numbers, names and addresses were printed right across the page, and the new double-column layout has necessitated contractions which must have caused a few restless nights to the linotype-operators. Their effort incidentally illustrates the superfluity of many letters in every day words. If one can read the latest Hamilton telephone f directory and understand it, surely this is an inducement for the complete modernisation of spelling.. Why waste time in scrawling ‘ Claudelands,” when everyone knows what is meant by “Cdelds.,” “Claudls ” and “Cldelds?”

The following well-kno\vn trades and. professions appear in new titles: Wd and clmcht; pub. accts; hidrssr and, tobccnst; barrstr and solr; phtgphr; mtr trimr; sntry insp; mcr and clthr; bkrs and patrycks; s.urgn dnst; mchnry-mchts; nrmn and first. Anyone but a bowler would i e inclined to give an ■mcomplimerffary interpretation of Cldeds Bg Club.’’ In the United States clubs have been formed for collecting bugs. The new directory is more compact and easily handled than its .predecessors and has enabled the incorporation of a classified business list. Its ab-. breviations, however, are' the ■ most interesting feature of a revelation even to newspaper reporters, who are supposed to have mastered the art of spelling and word economy.