Editing Newel (section)

== In popular culture ==
A loose ball cop [[finial]] on the newel post at the base of the stairway is a plot device in the 1946 classic ''[[It's a Wonderful Life]]''. The same is used in jest in the 1989 film ''[[Christmas Vacation]]'', in which [[Clark Griswold]], in an emotional meltdown, cuts a loose finial off a newel post with a chainsaw. He casually exclaims, "Fixed the newel post!" and carries on.{{cn|date=February 2022}}

In ''[[Family Guy]]'' season 17, episode 16, "You Can't Handle the Booth", Stewie and Brian argue over the semantics of Peter getting stuck in what Stewie calls "banister slats" and Brian corrects him by saying they are called "baluster slats". Stewie then asks if the "baluster" is the big, round thing at the bottom of the stairs where the staircase begins, to which Brian laughs at him and corrects him by saying "I believe what you are referring to is a newel post".

The comedy duo [[Nichols and May]] performed a routine about a frustrating attempt to obtain [[operator assistance]] from a trio of unhelpful [[Switchboard operator|telephone operators]], the first of whom uses a bizarre [[Spelling_alphabet|phonetic alphabet]] to clarify the spelling of the requested name, where "newel post" represents the letter N: "'K' as in 'knife'; 'A' as in 'aardvark'; 'P' as in 'pneumonia'; 'L' as in 'luscious'; 'A' as in 'aardvark' again; 'N' as in 'newel post', Kaplan?"