Table of Contents
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1. What is a tagline?
A tagline is a one line sentence that you add to the end of your
messages. They are often witty but sometimes serious or offensive.
It is up to the person writing the message to decide what tagline,
if any, they want to add to the end of their message. For example,
I often end my messages like this.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
-=} Randall {=- I put some sort of tagline right here.
Need a tagline? Visit http://www.taglinesgalore.com/
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2. Why are they called taglines?
Back in the late 1980s, I was very heavy in to the BBS scene. Back
then, the internet was still in the academic world and the World
Wide Web was yet to be invented. Also, the most common connection
speed was 2400 baud. So, in an effort to make good use of your time,
most folks would read their messages offline. People would call
up their favorite BBS and download a mail packet. They would then
use an offline mail reader to read and reply to this mail. Then
when they were ready, they would upload their reply packet back
to the BBS which would then insert the replies in the correct place.
Then something interesting happened.
Many of the offline mail readers would insert
an identification marker at the end of every mail message so that
readers would know that the person sending this message was using
their mail reader. These identifiers were usually less than 20 characters
in length. People quickly figured out that they could insert witty
phrases or parting barbs in the extra space for that line. It is
my opinion that these parting shots were called taglines because
it was the last thing a reader sees in the message. Others may have
a different opinion but that's mine.
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3. Where did you get all these
taglines?
It soon became apparent that these "taglines" were actually
fun to write. Many clever people wrote some pretty witty taglines
and parting shots. Collecting these taglines became something of
an art form and many people had huge collections. I was one of them.
However, things change and I left the BBS scene in favor of the
internet. That's when I found a site by Neil Enns. Neil had a site
at a college which he used to publish some 300,000 plus taglines.
He called that area of his site "Taglines Galore". I visited
the site often and thought it would be great to build a site with
the domain name "Taglines Galore".
I decided to create the site Taglines Galore.
I tried to contact Neil and ask him if it was ok to use the name
"Taglines Galore" and the collection of taglines. But
Neil had moved on from college and I was unable to find him. However,
I decided to go ahead and use the name and the collection as a starting
point. Since then, I've gotten a lot of individual submissions through
the submission page as a few bulk collections from other collectors.
It all adds up to quite a lot of taglines.
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4. What happened to the "original"
Taglines Galore?
I would like to admit that I obtained this collection of taglines
from the "original" taglines galore site. That site was
hosted at an educational institution. Sadly, that site has been
cleaned up by the local administration. A great piece of Net history
has moved on to the bit bucket. When I first came up with the idea
of having a domain name called "TaglinesGalore", I tried
in vain to contact the original collector of these taglines, Neil
Enns. However, despite my best efforts, I was unable to do so. But,
given what the internet is, he found me. Neil has since given his
blessings on my having the domain name and grabing his original
collection.
Thanks Neil.
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5. How come there are so many
duplicate taglines?
I've removed all the duplicate taglines I could find using unix
utilities and scripts. Also, when a new tagline is submitted, I
check to see if it is already in the database before adding it to
the collection. I've even added some checking to eliminate any tagline
that matches greater than 90%. However, software can only do so
much. Even a single space in a tagline makes it different from another
tagline that looks just like it.
For example:
There is a difference between "This is a tagline." and
"This is a tagline."
The difference is the extra space between "a" and "tagline".
I've added some checking to eliminate any tagline that matches greater
than 90% and I've done a lot of clean up. However, there are still
some duplicates that refuse to go away.
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6. Do you have
a complete set of taglines I can download?
I don't have a single file that you can download which contains
the entire collection. However, I do have all the taglines set up
in alpha order in seperate files. These files are found in the Alphabetical
Listings of Taglines directory. Some of these files are quite
large so I hope you have a fast connection. These files are also
updated when submissions are made.
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7. What other sites have you
done?
I have worked on a number of sites and the list keeps on growing.
Here are some of sites that I have worked on either in whole or
in part. I will add to this list as I work on other sites.
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