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Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

slate.com

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Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#61

Post by JoeAltmaier »

flatline wrote: post #57
3pt14159 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does HN truncate double spaces? Testing this now. Otherwise I'm only picking up one space after your sentences. Edit: Looks like it does. Yay PG! Edit2: Looks like I forgot some basics of HTML. My 14 year old self would be very disappointed.

The HTML rendering engine in your browser actually consolidates each block of white space into a single visible space character. If you view source, there are two spaces there. So, there's a good reason not to use two spaces, as the web will only show the one.

That's actually an argument for why it doesn't matter, so we can all continue to do as we please.

Is there a good reason the browser messes up my spacing? Certainly not for readability!

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#63

Post by njharman »

I had a real hard time determining if this article was serious or a sarcastic rant against people who get overwrought on trivialities.

>in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men's shirt buttons on the right and women's on the left.

Those are both examples of arbitrary decisions carried forward by inertia and slavish adherence to dogma. Makes me strongly believe the two space rule is another example. I read most, skimmed rest (it was kind of hard to find sentence breaks actually) of article but I found no argument or justification other than "typographers" say it's so.

I also frequently use monospaced fonts. So, author and these unquoted/unspecified typographers he claims to speak for can kiss my shiny double-spaced ass.

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#64

Post by sciolistse »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #61
flatline wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HTML rendering engine in your browser actually consolidates each block of white space into a single visible space character. If you view source, there are two spaces there. So, there's a good reason not to use two spaces, as the web will only show the one.

That's actually an argument for why it doesn't matter, so we can all continue to do as we please. Is there a good reason the browser messes up my spacing? Certainly not for readability!

It's because spacing is used for both structure and presentation in HTML, so something like:

    This is some text
    while this is some more text.
shouldn't render the 4 indentation spaces that I used.. If it did we'd have to pack it all into one line. Can be adjusted appropriately with CSS though, if people here were obsessive about the presentation of their spacing.

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#65

Post by koenigdavidmj »

splat wrote: post #26
sausagefeet wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think LaTeX does this. Anything more than 1 whitespace is ignored.

Yes, LaTeX ignores anything more than one whitespace in the source. It does, however, automatically insert extra space after a period. (Unless you disable it with the ~ symbol, e.g. after the word Mr. or e.g.)

It is not two full spaces, however, but a wider single space. Closer to 1.5 normal spaces.

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#66

Post by InnocentB »

gacba wrote: post #33
mcantor wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the jury is still out on Vim vs. Emacs.

Yes, and whichever you choose, you're wrong because you'll be double-spacing in it.

Especially in Emacs: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/lisp/textmod...

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#67

Post by wolfrom »

As both a hacker and a hack writer, I follow William Shunn's manuscript format: http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html

"In the days of typewriters, the usual practice was to put two spaces after the end of every sentence, and also to put two spaces after every colon. This helped make the separations between sentences more apparent, and helped editors more easily distinguish periods from commas and colons from semicolons. With the dominance of computers, that practice is changing, and it is more common now to see only one space between sentences.

"Ingrained habits die hard, though, so if you're used to hitting the spacebar twice after a period, you shouldn't stress out about it, particularly if you're using a Courier font."

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#69

Post by Vivtek »

It already irritated me that he says I'm wrong after a lifetime of typing - but then he goes on to misspell "Ay yi yi". Does he think that was a piratical saying? Wouldn't you think someone obsessed with punctuation would at least care a little about spelling?

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#70

Post by handelaar »

Why you should always, always use two spaces after a full-stop (when writing for online use):

1. Because it remains correct in monospace, and 2. Because no HTML rendering engine displays the second one anyway.

This man's rather ill-informed about the 'tech' part of his 'tech column' gig.

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