Why would a modern press release, written in a browser and sent by email, still end with three pound signs that no reader is supposed to read? The short answer is that the ### at the end of a press release was never meant for readers. It is a message to the person handling the copy, and that person has needed the same message for more than 160 years: you have reached the end, and nothing below this line belongs in the story.
Most writers type it out of habit and never think about it again. That works until a release goes out with legal footnotes that an editor mistakes for news, or a page break that cuts a quote in half, or a wire template that already adds its own closing line. The mark is small. What it protects is not.
Where the ### at the end of a press release came from
Start with the older mark, -30-, because it has the better paper trail. Journalists in North America used it for generations to tell editors and typesetters that a story was complete, and it carried over into press releases. The most cited explanation points to the telegraph. Western Union adopted a numeric shorthand called the 92 Code in 1859 so operators could send common phrases with a few keystrokes, and in that code 30 meant the end of a transmission.
The word historian Barry Popik has collected early printed proof of that meaning. The Erie Railway’s train instructions, effective January 1, 1862, list “30. Finis.” So does the Atlantic & Great Western Railroad’s rulebook for 1863. Wood’s Plan of Telegraphic Instruction, published in Syracuse in 1864, gives the same definition. Telegraph operators who moved copy for newspapers brought those signals into the newsroom, and the number stuck long after the telegraph stopped being the way stories traveled.
Nobody can prove that chain from start to finish, and reporters have argued about it for decades. When American Journalism Review looked into the question in 2007, in a piece by Hadass Kogan titled “So Why Not 29?”, it collected a pile of rival theories. One says the first story sent by telegraph ran 30 words. Another says writers once ended sentences with X, paragraphs with XX and stories with XXX, which is 30 in Roman numerals. A third, more legend than history, tells of a telegraph operator who stayed at his key for 30 hours and tapped out a 3 and a 0 as he collapsed. The radio show A Way with Words put it plainly in 2012: no one knows for sure.
The three pound signs have an even thinner record. The same AJR piece quotes Don Harrison, a former Philadelphia newsman, recalling that “-30-,” ”#” and “end it” were all used to close a story on deadline. That is about as close to an origin as anyone has found. What we can say is that the pound sign was on every typewriter, it could not be mistaken for a word or a number in the story, and three of them in a row made an unmissable stop sign at the bottom of a page. PR writers adopted it, and it became the default.
So the ### at the end of a press release is a descendant of a working signal between telegraph operators, editors and typesetters. Its job was practical then, and it still is.
Is ### still a rule, or just a habit?
It is still taught as a rule. FEMA’s public information officer course lists the parts of a news release, and among them it names “More” for continuation and “End,” ”# # #” or -30- for the close. Public relations textbooks say the same thing. One open textbook on strategic communication writing tells students to put three pound signs or -30- at the bottom of a release, to center the word “more” at the bottom of any page that continues, and to avoid splitting a paragraph across a page break.
That last instruction explains why -more- exists at all. When releases arrived by mail or fax, pages got separated. A page with no -more- at the bottom looked finished, and an editor might set the story without the second half. The continuation mark and the end mark worked as a pair: one said keep going, the other said stop. If your release still goes out as a printed handout at an event or a PDF that someone might print, both marks still earn their place.
Do not mistake the end mark for an Associated Press rule. AP style governs a lot of what happens inside a release, from datelines to titles to numbers, and you should follow it there (our guide to AP style for press releases covers the parts editors notice most). But the AP’s own 1951 Copy Book, the manual it used for handling wire copy, does not use -30- or ### anywhere. When AP staff needed to mark the end of an advance story, they used a caption such as END ADVANCE with the release time. The pound signs come from public relations practice, not from the wire service’s style rules.
Now look at what the big distribution services actually publish. Open a recent release on PR Newswire, such as Garmin’s November 3, 2026 announcement from Olathe, Kansas, and you will find no ###. The body ends, and the page closes with a line that reads “SOURCE Garmin International, Inc.” Business Wire works the same way with a different template. Fujifilm’s instax mini Evo 2 release, sent from Valhalla, New York, in October 2026, ends with a copyright line and a short tag, then a Contacts block. A July 2026 GlobeNewswire release from Notified closed with a sentence noting that it was published by a verified individual. None of these carried the three pound signs on the published page.
Whether the wire editors strip the mark or the writers leave it off, the result is the same. On a wire, the template is the end mark. The SOURCE line or the Contacts block tells every reader and every syndication partner exactly where the release stops.
That does not make ### obsolete. Your release lives in more places than the wire. It goes into pitch emails, onto your newsroom page, into a PDF in your press kit, and into the inboxes of reporters who copy it into their own notes. In every one of those places there is no template to draw the line for you. The mark is still the cheapest way to separate the story from everything that follows it.
The Last Inch Check
Newspapers used to talk about column inches, and the last inch of a story was where things went wrong: a line cut for space, a correction that never ran, a byline on the wrong piece. The bottom of a press release has the same risk. So before any release goes out, I run what I call the Last Inch Check. It has five parts, and each one is a question you can answer in under a minute.
Story complete. Read the paragraph directly above your end mark and ask whether a reporter could stop there and have everything they need. If the most useful fact is sitting in a footnote below the mark, move it up. Editors treat what comes after ### as reference material, and reference material rarely makes it into a story.
Boilerplate current. The “About” paragraph sits just above the mark in most releases, which makes it the last thing an editor reads before the stop. Check the employee count, the location count, the funding total and the product list against what is true today. A stale boilerplate is the most common error in the last inch, and reporters lift it word for word.
Contact reachable. Put a named person with a direct email and phone number either above the mark or in the header, and make sure that person will be at their desk the day the release goes out. A release that ends cleanly but routes questions to a dead inbox has still failed. Our breakdown of press release contact information goes through what to include.
Mark matched to channel. Use ### (or -30-, if your team prefers it, but never both) on every version you control: the email, the web page, the PDF. Use -more- only where a page break exists. On a wire submission, follow the service’s template and do not fight it. The goal is one clear stop in every format, not three pound signs at any cost.
Fine print placed below. Trademark notices, forward-looking statement disclaimers, pricing footnotes and image credits belong under the mark, not mixed into the closing paragraphs. This is the part of the check most writers skip, and it is the reason the mark still matters. The line tells everyone that the material underneath is there for accuracy and legal cover, not for quoting.
Run all five on your next release and you will notice that the check is less about the symbol than about what sits on either side of it. The ### at the end of a press release is only useful if the story above it is finished and the material below it is clearly labeled as something else.
How American Honda still ends a release with # #
For a current example of the end mark doing exactly this job, look at American Honda’s newsroom. On October 1, 2026, Honda published a release from Torrance, California, titled “Updated 2027 Honda Civic Type R Gains Sharper Performance, Heated Seats and More Standard Tech; Arriving Soon.” It is a long product release, the kind with a bulleted summary at the top and a lot of specifications in the body.
Scroll to the bottom and the structure is a clean demonstration of the Last Inch Check. The story ends with the safety technology section. Then comes the “About Honda” boilerplate, with current facts about its dealer network and U.S. production. Then an “Important Notice” saying the information is accurate as of publication and subject to change. Then, centered on its own line, three spaced pound signs: # # #.
Everything after that line is fine print. There is a trademark note for Google and Gemini, a note about connected app compatibility, and the pricing footnotes that explain the manufacturer’s suggested retail price and the $1,295 destination charge. A reporter writing about the car needs those details to get the price right. No reporter would quote them as news, and Honda’s layout makes that obvious at a glance. Nissan’s newsroom did the same thing on October 14, 2026, closing its 2027 Altima press kit with # # # and placing its safety system disclaimers underneath.
There is a small coincidence in the Honda release, too. One of the bullet points at the top notes that 2027 marks the 30th anniversary of the Civic Type R globally. A release celebrating the number 30, closed with the mark that replaced -30- in most press offices, is about as good a reminder as you will find that this old newsroom signal still works when someone uses it on purpose.