The End of the Line
Monday, October 5, 2009 at 03:13PM 
For years we’ve seen -30-’s at the end of press releases. Most PR pros insert -30- (or some variation of it) at the close of every release they write. For most of us it’s habit… kind of like signing our name at the bottom of a letter.
Over the years, a few people have asked me where the -30- came from, but honestly, no one really knows where it originated. According to Wikipedia there are several possibilities, dating all the way back to the days when stories were written in longhand.
However, -30- became much more useful when organizations started transmitting news releases primarily via fax. Often times, pages at the end of the transmission got lost due to either hardware or paper problems, or the simple act of moving printed pages from one desk to another.
When a reporter or editor received a faxed press release, they needed to know that they had all of the material necessary to assemble a news story. Over time, -30- became the standard mechanism for signaling the end of original content. If a media recipient saw one at the end of a release, they knew they had the full document in hand.
Over time, technology has decreased the chances of material disappearing from the end of a document, so many press release writers have dropped the -30-. However, even though hardware malfunctions are less common, there’s always the potential for user error. Hosting a story online involves cutting and pasting, and it’s easy to accidentally miss some text. A simple -30- at the end of the document will let your reader know they’ve seen all of the material you released.
As I mentioned earlier, there are a few alternatives to -30-: some writers insert ###‘s or -END-’s. Dash thirty dash is still the most commonly used conclusion indicator, and I’d suggest using it over the other options.
Some press release writers have gotten creative and inserted their website in its place. Here’s a great example from SUNY Canton. This practice allows authors to direct traffic to their web site without mentioning it in the body of their release. This is a particularly effective strategy for those times when you don’t have room for a boilerplate at the end of your release.
Although it’s not as important as it once was, signaling the end of your press release with a -30- still serves a purpose. I’d recommend sticking with it. If you want to get a little more use out of the last line of your release, try using -www.mywebsite.com- instead. Either way, you’ll effectively convey to the reader that the above release is complete, while adding a nice, traditional, professional touch.
You can think of -30- as the “happily ever after” at the end of a fairy tale. As soon as we see it we know the story’s over, and we can walk away happily. The end.
Reader Comments (1)
This makes me a true dinosaur, but I started on a paper that still set on a linotype machine, cast it in hot lead, and laid out the slugs of type by hand. The -30- told the typesetter to hit 30 em dashes -- the equivalent of a solid line across the entire column -- to mark the end of the story. It told the people who were putting the columns together that the end of the story had been reached, and it served as a graphic device to tell the reader he or she had hit the end of the story.