People used to use telegraph ciphers that abbreviated common phrases with unusual words to pay less. The real words was a feature as the telegraph company was s

People used to use telegraph ciphers that abbreviated common phrases with unusual words to pay less. The real words was a feature as the telegraph company was suspicious about balderdash, and there was no reason to optimize for character count as it was paid per word (or rather a fixed fee + word fee so it never got cheap). An example: http://archive.org/stream/unicodeuniversa00unkngoog#page/n3/mode/2up http://archive.org/stream/unicodeuniversa00unkngoog#page/n3/... where "Acceptance paid into bank, cannot be withdrawn" becomes abjectio in an early example. More tragic (under Births): "Confined yesterday, Twins, one alive, a girl, Mother not expected to to live" becomes annexus.