What does CQ stand for/where did it come from?

Yeah, golfnut, they're different in that they're completely opposite. CQ means it's right. sic means it's wrong.

 

CQ stands for colloquial, which is an outdated or old-fashioned word that usually is no longer used.

 

Not in newspaper edting it doesn't.

Like that.

 

Yes, "CQ" comes from Latin, just like "stet" and "ibid."

And I'm saying to take a shot at myself as much as anyone, but the American education system died the day they stopped requiring students to take Latin in high school. I kick myself for not taking it in college.

 

and N.B. and e.g. and i.e.

 

Etc.

 

You know, the minute I looked at my post and saw I had a misspelling, I knew that was coming.

 

The whole exercise of pointing out others' mistakes in print just makes me sic.

 

i.e. not well.

 

CQ doesn't stand for colloquial.

It doesn't stand for "correct as quoted."

And it doesn't come from Latin.

It means correct, and has meant that since at least 1879.

It's from the Phillips Code, an early teletype code, a type of shorthand. Phillips was Walter P. Phillips of the Associated Press.

That's the same place we get SCOTUS for Supreme Court, and POTUS for President of the United States, and "30" for no more, etc.

That doesn't mean Phillips made up all those codes himself, but he codified it. There were lots of such codebooks, but Phillips got his published and through the AP it became a standard. We still have that book, online:


See:

http://www.radions.net/philcode.htm

http://www.qsl.net/ae0q/phillip1.htm

http://www.qsl.net/ae0q/phillip2.htm

http://www.qsl.net/ae0q/phillip3.htm



CQ is in section 26 in that phillip2 file.


His description of the code sounds like, well, what we do today, putting news on the Interwebs:

A THOUROUGHLY TESTED METHOD OF SHORT-
HAND ARRANGED FOR TELEGRAPHIC PUR-
POSES. AND CONTEMPLATING THE
RAPID TRANSMISSION OF PRESS
REPORTS; ALSO INTENDED
TO BE USED AS AN

E A S I L Y A C Q U I R E D M E T H O D

FOR

General Newspaper and Court
Reporting

by

Walter P. Phillips


An interesting bio of Phillips is at the top of that first take.

 

I was told a long time ago it stands for "correct but queer." (I know, I know, politically incorrect and all that nonsense.)

 

I've always been taught that CQ means that the reporter is very sure something is correct and, therefore, the copy desk should do it's best to check it again.

It comes from Chester Quigley a reporter at the New York Times in the 1910s who frequently initialed odd spelled names to indicate that he had double-checked them. He was frequently wrong, hence the desk tradition of questioning everything that's CQed.