Today Sun Mon
It is forcast to be Partly Cloudy at 11:00 PM EDT on May 26, 2012
Partly Cloudy
22°/18°		 It is forcast to be Mostly Cloudy at 11:00 PM EDT on May 27, 2012
Mostly Cloudy
22°/15°		 It is forcast to be Chance of a Thunderstorm at 11:00 PM EDT on May 28, 2012
Chance of a Thunderstorm
24°/14°

26 Comments

news

S.T.O.P.

By Jaime Woo

20090115stop.jpg
Photo by PDPhotography from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.


Earlier this month, the Globe ran a piece on Toronto, interviewing locals about the parts of town they enjoy most. The most interesting thing about the article, however, was the title: I love T.O. Of all short forms for the city, “T.O.” is the worst, and when the venerable daily, the guardian of Canadian grammatical structure and etiquette, is happily letting in T.O., something must be said.
T.O. has been used in headlines since as far back as 2004 (take a couple of Sun articles on the wall of P.J. O’Brien’s as proof). It’s easy to understand why editors like T.O. over TO: the extra periods make Toronto more aggressive—it harkens back to retro badass organizations like S.P.E.C.T.R.E. or S.W.A.T.—and take up more room, like a bird puffing itself up. In the newspaper wars, where bigger! and badder! sell more, slim and modern TO doesn’t stand a chance.
Typing T.O. also messes up our word processor, which tries to capitalize everything after it. (Maybe that’s why it’s only used in headlines, where Everything Is in Title Case Anyhow.) It also requires twice the characters as TO, an indulgence in the age of texts and tweets. But the biggest problem with T.O. is that it’s grammatically wrong. T.O. is an “initialism,” says copy editor Gerry Jenkison, “that is, it’s the first letter of each word.” Unlike L.A. for Los Angeles, however, Toronto is only one word; Montreal, for example, is never M.T.L. Some claim it’s short for Toronto, Ontario, but then where is L.A.C. for Los Angeles or M.Q. for Montreal? (Although we kind of think N.Y.C.N.Y. is fun.)
If not for efficiency, think of the children; many of them learn to read through newspapers. “There is some basis for using TO (though not T.O.),” says Jenkison. “TO would be an abbreviation—a shortened form, like PA for Pennsylvania or AB for Alberta. There’s no particular pattern for choosing letters in these examples. TO, regardless of which ‘O’ is represented, is an acceptable abbreviation.” It’s time to retire T.O.: at best, it’s tabloid; at worst, wrong. Period.

Filed under: ,

Report error Send a tip

Comments

  • http://undefined mexxonator

    “It’s time to retire T.O.: at best, it’s tabloid; at worst, wrong. Period.”
    I would say it’s neither.
    Tabloid? Two extra periods do not scream “badass”. I don’t really see how anyone would come to that conclusion.
    Wrong? The logic here (“L.A.C.”, “M.Q.”) makes no sense. It’s like saying that because Q.C. is not commonly used to refer to Quebec City, N.Y.C. is therefore wrong.
    It’s really just a matter of confusion as to TO’s origins. Does TO stand for Toronto, Ontario? Or is it just an abbreviation? Since it’s not set in stone, either is acceptable for now.
    Hopefully, a standard will develop in the future, but not a big deal.

  • http://null Stephanie

    I always assumed it was T for Toronto, O for Ontario. Otherwise it’s ridiculous, periods or none.

  • Jaime Woo

    I think the Toronto, Ontario, origin is the most believed story. It’s a little suspect, however, that nowhere else uses a similar initialism! I do hope people rally and start using T.O.C.E. soon. :D

  • http://undefined David Topping

    I am, frankly, far more considered about T-dot’s proliferation.

  • http://null j0hnnyb

    The article is, at best, pedantry, and at worst, nonsense.

  • http://undefined mister j

    Great article! I love this kind of stuff! I tend to agree that T.O. is incorrect. I wonder if it came into use, not from short-forming a written statement, but from the attempt to capture the spoken “tee-ohh.”
    And there is a standard already, as found in various style guides. According to the OED, T.O. means ‘turn over,’ like turn the page over. However, The Canadian Press Caps and Spelling states that no periods are used in abbreviations like YMCA, but are used in geographical abbreviations like B.C., P.E.I, and -here it is- T.O. So, the Canadian Press gives T.O. the A.O.K. !

  • http://null yaubo

    To me, grammatically it makes more sense to write T.O.
    When you say “TO” out loud, you’re pronouncing each letter independently. Meaning, what you really are saying is “T.O.” isn’t it? Making that the most literal written translation?
    If you actually said TO (no pause), you’d just be saying… well, to. As in, go ‘to’ the mall.
    Just because you capitalize it doesn’t automatically make it another word. That’d be like saying cat and CAT mean different things.

  • http://www.bitpicture.com Marc Lostracco

    This reminds me of the really irritating house style of the New York Times, where they still use periods for the acronyms of organizations (that are not said as words, like NATO), but not familiar objects. So, they have sentence syntax like, “The N.A.A.C.P. uses DVD’s supplied by I.B.M.”
    And yes, they also use the apostrophe for a plural when it’s an acronym (CD’s instead of CDs), and they tend to use full names and middle initials, as in “according to Apple’s C.E.O., Stephen P. Jobs” and “in a statement, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said…” Annoying.

  • http://null kevinruairi

    Global warming, world poverty and hunger, wars in the Middle East & Africa – its good to see Torontonians (or should that be T.O.’nians) are focusing on the real issues.

  • http://null Svend

    I’ve always hated T.O., T-dot, T-zip and I’m glad T-Town never caught on.

  • http://null native

    “T dot O dot one of a kind”
    If this spelling makes it into hip hop in 2001, clearly it’s been used a lot longer than “as far back as 2004″. I grew up in this town and it’s always been T.O. to me.

  • http://null casuistry

    This is the dumbest article I’ve seen on T’ist. This is, really, the only dumb article I’ve seen here.
    You can dislike “T.O.” if you want, but saying it can’t be for “Toronto, Ontario” because “L.A.” doesn’t have a “C.” after it doesn’t allow Toronto to be an innovator. And perhaps the “T.O.” is a variant of “TO”, but… it still seems like a reasonable possibility.
    But then, I moved here from PDX — Portland, Oregon — where the X stands for, well, nothing — it’s just part of the airport code. Like LAX. And PDX is the only city whose most common nickname/abbreviation is its airport code. Just like T.O. is the only one that includes the state or province. No biggie.

  • http://thomaseaves.wordpress.com blackhatcadillac

    LOL we could all just refer to Toronto as YYZ from now on. How come all the US airports got codes somehow related to their names, and Pearson International Airport in Toronto got YYZ? There aren’t even any Ys or Zs (or if you work for the New York Times, Y’s or Z’s) in “Pearson International Airport” or “Toronto”. *grumble grumble*

  • http://null montauk

    I do think this is pretty fluffy, but I don’t think it represents the interest of Torontoist or Torontonians in real issues. I think there’s room in this world to be both obsessive grammar freaks and humanitarian thinkers.

  • http://null montauk

    Hahaha…YYZ.

  • http://null .A.J.F.

    I wince when I see spelling and grammatical errors, but this is absolutely ridiculous. Of all the things to get worked up about, fretting over periods in an abbreviation has to be among the silliest I’ve ever seen. Pedantic doesn’t even begin to describe it.
    Thanks for the inspiration, though.

  • http://null davedave

    T dot., T.O. and TO are all dorky.
    Obviously we should be calling it TORONTO CITY.

  • http://null Rachel Lissner

    Hey, Toronto, if it makes you feel any better, Washington, D(.)C(.) doesn’t have a real concensus on the periods. Clearly it is an abbreviation but if you Google “dc” you will find Wikipedia’s article on “Washington, D.C.” and a link to http://www.washington.org, “Official Tourism Site of Washington, DC.” And dcist isn’t “d.c.ist.” But we have other things to think about in Washington.
    Maybe Toronto should just have a symbol, like [T], or a picture, that can be universally agreed on.
    Also…this was a silly article.

  • http://null Rachel Lissner

    Ugh, I just realized that placing periods in parentheses was such a bad idea.

  • http://null Svend

    I know a few people that use airport codes for every city they visit, showing off that they are world travelers. It’s just another annoyance in my life.

  • Jaime Woo

    I really think M.I.A. should move here. T.O. would totally dig it.

  • http://null montauk

    hahahahahhahahahahhaha

  • person man

    Where on earth did you get the year 2004? “T.O.” goes back at least to the ’80s, and maybe earlier but (ahem) I was too young to notice. Its use has actually faded a lot since then, and “T-dot” is far stupider.
    I suspect (but this is a guess) it’s really derived from the first two letters in Toronto and the “I love NY” ad campaign from the ’70s, the dots are so you don’t pronounce it “two,” and the “Toronto, Ontario” explanation is imaginary.

  • http://null escape

    I wondered about that too… a google search found this info:
    “The Canadians made off with all the remaining ‘Y codes which helps explain YUL for Montreal, YYC for Calgary, etc. (The start of the the song YYZ by the band Rush is the Morse code for the letters Y Y Z. Rush is from Toronto.)” (from http://www.skygod.com/asstd/abc.html)
    And check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YYZ_(song)

  • http://undefined rek

    When did Africa become a Toronto issue?

  • http://undefined rek

    The Canadian aerospace whatnot organization requested airport codes that were unique. I forget the whole story but it’s on Wikipedia if you care to read it.