San Francisco is a city of transoms (from the Latin, trans, across). The first were the horizontals of crosses brought by the Spanish. Next came the sterns of ships, recycled as building material. Then, the yardarms of (vigilante) gallows. Finally, the modern transom, that little, above-the-office-door window that tilts open to enhance ventilation. This device is especially appropriate in this equable city, where air conditioning is so easily accomplished by the fierce fogs of summer.

Our office has a transom. Which is cool, because unsolicited manuscripts are said to arrive “over the transom.” We like getting unsolicited manuscripts—in an average issue, including this one, only two or three pieces were formally invited—and we’re glad to make it as easy as possible, metaphorically, for writers to show us their wares.

But did the phrase ever reflect reality? Did writers really chuck their scripts over transoms? And if they did, did they do it overhand, like quarterbacks, or sidearm, like Ultimate Frisbeers?

Dictionaries of slang are notoriously silent on where “over the transom” came from, but Robert Hartwell Fiske, editor and publisher of The Vocabula Review, replying to my query, said he thought the phrase originated with “newspaper writers who—lest they miss their deadline by taking the few extra moments to open the door, perhaps—did indeed toss their stories over the door’s transom and into the editor’s office.”

Or was it to save postage, the way today’s wannabes complain about the cost of stamping a self-addressed envelope (necessary to receive a reply)? Maybe the writers in those days had day jobs and could only come by at night, when the office was closed, but the transom remained open? (The mails were probably more trustworthy back then, but perhaps they were too slow for some impatient submitters.) Maybe the old-time receptionists were truly forbidding, and flipping a ms. over the transom, was, like abandoning a baby on a doorstep, the only way to avoid the full brunt of society’s opprobrium.

There are many mysteries in this business—how to get published is certainly among the leaders—and it’s reassuring to realize that our office is well equipped for every contingency of submission. We could get by without a literal transom, but day after day ours reminds us of the crosses, the sailing ships, the gallows...and the hope-filled writers we exist to serve.