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Does anyone know a) the origins, or b) the name of the convention of replacing dates or place names in 18th / 19th century novels with a horizontal line? I'm not asking for the reasons authors did this, (various answers are given here), but as it were the genealogy of its use.

An example, from Laurence Sterne's marvellous Tristram Shandy:

My father, you must know, who was originally a Turky merchant, but had left off business for some years, in order to retire to, and die upon, his paternal estate in the county of ------ , was, I believe, one of the most regular men in every thing he did, whether 'twas matter of business, or matter of amusement, that ever lived.

[EDIT:] The word is not "redaction", as some have suggested (see the comment below and those on the linked question above). Redaction means (quoting the OED, 'redaction', section 1.b):

b. The action or process of revising or editing text, esp. in preparation for publication; (also) an act of editorial revision.

What I am referring to is at best an act of simulated redaction by the author. It is not the editor's work, but the author's. I just wonder whether there exists a literary term for this kind of simulated redaction.

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Greenchurch
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  • Redaction is the normal name, as the other question indicates. – Tim Lymington Jun 21 '13 at 17:05
  • Thanks, but please see my edit above. – Greenchurch Jun 21 '13 at 17:11
  • When confidential papers are published, they are often in the form 'Our agent in Moscow, Mr XXXX, said..' or '(table of expenditure omitted here for reasons of commercial confidentiality)'. This is called (in British courts) at least) redaction, probably from sense 3 of redact: 'To reduce to a certain state or condition, esp. an undesirable one'. Seems perfect to me. – Tim Lymington Jun 21 '13 at 17:34
  • I'm not clear on how this is different from the duplicate question. If you can make that more succinct, we can unduplicate this question. – Kit Z. Fox Jun 21 '13 at 17:39
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    Tim: redaction implies a prior state of the text which has been somehow changed or removed. In the case I'm referring to, there is no prior state -- the authors are pretending to remove some specific information, to give the impression of verisimilitude, or for whatever reason. They don't first write the date, then delete it, it's a strategy of artifice to make it look like this has happened. That's why (in my opinion) "redaction" doesn't apply here. I might be splitting hairs though... – Greenchurch Jun 21 '13 at 18:14
  • KitFox: the question I link to asks for the reason this is done; I'm asking whether there's a term for it, and what its origins are. I can see that there is some overlap, though, and since I'm a beginner here I'm willing to bow to the experience of others, if they think this is a duplicate question. – Greenchurch Jun 21 '13 at 18:15

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