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especially strong in most cases.
(3) Double Punctuation (Type A)
In practice punctuation is often modified according to the habits of the operator perforating the tape. Many operators were trained to change from figure to letter shift and vice versa by depressing the shift keys twice (or more) to ensure that the shift change actually took place. These operators were mostly employed at the Konigsberg exchange or on Rome Bream, but after the Konigsberg exchange had moved to Berlin double punctuation made a general appearance in the West (see also R4 p. 5).
Fig. 22 (VIII) shows P and ΔP counts for a message with double punctuation. In the P count 5 and 8 are almost twice as frequent as they are in the single punctuation count [Fig. 22 (VII)], and are almost as high as 9. Language naturally forms a small proportion of the message and the strength of language letters is reduced.
The main significance of double punctuation lies in the inflation of stroke in ΔP, so that strokes may occur with 3 - 6 times random frequency.
(4) Other operators habits (auto).
Certain other forms of punctuation are popular on particular links or with particular operators: they are given differenced and undifferenced so that their contribution to ΔP can be estimated
| P: | 5M98 | ΔP: | U05 |
| 5M989 | U055 | ||
| 5MMA89 | U/8M5 | ||
| 55KK889, 55LL889 (Brackets) | /H/T/5, /D/P/5 and so on. |
In some messages 9 is inserted before all punctuation and 8 is the highest letter in ΔP. A few operators divide words with 89 or even 989 and this inflates 5 to a high level in ΔP even in German language messages with little punctuation.
(5) Operators habits (hand)
Spacing and punctuation in hand is erratic, and even the most improbable letters may be inflated by operators who tap out some pair of letters in turn while thinking, e.g. LALALALA
(6) Numerals
The most common letters in undifferenced numerals are P, Q, and W. In general, numerals are rarely sufficiently frequent to make much difference to the shape of P or ΔP counts.
Occasional examples of messages consisting entirely of numerals
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