How Did the Word “News” Originate?
The word “News” which was created to describe what newspapers are supposed to print, came from the four letters which have for ages been used as abbreviations of the directions of the compass. In this N stands for North, E for East, S for South and W for West, and in illustrating the points of the compass the following diagram has long been used:
The earliest newspapers always printed this sign on the front pages of their papers in every issue. This was done to indicate that the paper printed all the happenings from four quarters of the globe.
Later on some enterprising newspaper man who may have forgotten the original significance of the letter in the diagram, arranged the letters N. E. W. S. in a straight line at the head of the paper and that is how what we read in the papers came to be known as news.
Almost one-half the whole number of newspapers published in the world are published in the United States and Canada.