Talk:In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash

based on his radio stories
These short stories, later retold in A Christmas Story, were retellings of the stories he told on his radio program. It would be nice to find a source to support that. Dlabtot (talk) 01:49, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: move the page, per the discussion below. Dekimasu よ! 02:07, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash → In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash – Should use colon instead of a comma. George Ho (talk) 03:00, 26 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Weak support. The present title is more or less unique to Wikipedia and is therefore probably insupportable. On the other hand, styling this title as if "all others pay cash" were a subtitle isn't really right, because it isn't one. On the third hand, sources including Amazon and Google books do format the title with the colon. Styling the title as In God We Trust (All Others Pay Cash) would be my preferred option, but that rendering is much less common in the (online) sources that I checked. I'd support the proposed title as an improvement on the present one, but I wish we could do even better. 209.211.131.181 (talk) 16:36, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Worldcat for the first edition uses a comma. 2601:D:3080:EA2:6588:A197:BBC9:A241 (talk) 18:00, 26 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Support. There are wide variations in how the title is presented (colons, commas, dashes, parentheses, no punctuation at all). Bookrags, Alibris, iTunes, IMDB, WordandFilm.com, North Texas Libraries, and others use commas. However, the publisher itself (Doubleday/Random House) uses a colon. That seems authoritative, to me. - Tim1965 (talk) 16:11, 1 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

New York Times best seller list assertion is false
The statement in the current article that the book made the NYT best seller list in 1966 is demonstrably false. I just checked every such list -- which appeared in the Times' book review section every Sunday -- and it is not there. Nor does the cited NYT obit of October 18, 1999, support the specific assertion. I am unable to locate a free copy of the cited Chicago Sun-Times article, though. Of course, since the foregoing is "original research," not otherwise appearing in a published source (to my knowledge), Wikipedia guidelines would likely preclude me from merely deleting the erroneous statement in the current article. Don Columbia (talk) 16:19, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Punctuation between In God We Trust and All Others Pay Cash
Continuing with the closed discussion, where the last-posted comment regards the publisher's punctuation to be "authoritative." In support thereof, the comment links to a current listing for a decades-later edition of the book now published/distributed by Crown/Penguin Random House (which ultimately absorbed the original publisher), not a contemporary source by the original, first-edition publisher, Doubleday. Doubleday ran a full-page ad for the novel on October 23, 1966, in the Sunday book review section of the New York Times. In the ad, Doubleday twice referred to the book as "IN GOD WE TRUST, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH," employing a comma, not a colon! Having said that, I think Ol' Shep would have derived much amusement from the discussion, and could have built an entire show on WOR radio, or even a college concert, around it. Excelsior! Don Columbia (talk) 15:15, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Eugene Bergmann not Shepherd's biographer
Eugene B. Bergmann repeatedly said he was not Shepherd's biographer, including in his last post on June 27, 2023, not long before his death:

'''I trust that you will understand why the book is NOT a biography, but a description and appreciation of Shep’s genius—and thus why front matter of the book is crucial–ebb

'''The openings of my EXCELSIOR, YOU FATHEAD! are meant to explain that the book (despite the publisher’s unwanted and inaccurate flyleaf comment) that it’s a “biography.” Rather it is a very personal approach to what and why Jean Shepherd is of such importance to each listener’s thought processes that assist us in our way of seeing and responding to our world. That is the essence of why the book was written this way. Jean Shepherd would expect no less.'

See: https://shepquest.wordpress.com/ Don Columbia (talk) 17:38, 11 April 2024 (UTC)