Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

slate.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 174 posts

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

#101

Post by zokier »

nchlswu wrote: post #72

I've always been a single spacer. I understood the purpose in monospace, I otherwise never understood the practice. Almost everyone I've heard only practices it because that's how they learned. That reason wasn't good enough, especially when that was (mostly) rooted in the typewriter, and we're using the modern day computer. Some (justified) reasons are enlightening. I was always under the impression that in a proper…

Not ASCII but Unicode: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/category/Zs/list.htm

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

#102

Post by haberman »

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.

> The HTML rendering engine in your browser actually consolidates each block of white space into a single visible space character.

I don't believe that's true when the browser decides to break the line between the two spaces -- see: http://i.imgur.com/MksV7.png (which I took from http://www.jeanhsu.com/?p=229)

So I guess you could argue that putting two spaces in HTML is strictly a negative: it does nothing, except when it makes things look worse. Even that being as it is, I'll never stop putting two spaces between sentences.

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

#103

Post by apotheon »

stcredzero wrote: post #48
edw519 wrote: post #35

Articles with the word "never" in the title: Beware their myopia, lack of vision, and narrow-mindedness. Articles with the word "ever" in the title: Beware their gross generalizations, lack of gray area, and hasty conclusions. Articles with both the words "never" and "ever" in the title: Never, ever read them. (oops)

What galls me about two-spacers isn't just their numbers. It's their certainty that they're right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the "correct" number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone-everyone!-said it was proper to use two spaces. What the articles fails to clearly menti…

> What the articles fails to clearly mention

. . . is a whole lot of stuff:

http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.014.10.05.57

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

#104

Post by alanfalcon »

baby wrote: post #77
stcredzero wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What galls me about two-spacers isn't just their numbers. It's their certainty that they're right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the "correct" number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone-everyone!-said it was proper to use two spaces. What the articles fails to clearly menti…

You're suppose to write the dot after the end of the parenthesis not before !

Actually, you should use a period inside parentheses if the enclosed material is meant to stand alone as a sentence.

By the way, there is no space before the exclaimation mark in American English.

As for double spacing after a sentence, I had broken myself of the habit once I learned all publications use single spaces, but the iPhone has conditioned me to use double spaces again since that's the shortcut to drop a period at the end of a sentence.

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

#108

Post by alanfalcon »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #15

HTML removes extra spaces. I used a double space there, but you only see a single space. Since much of what people read these days is HTML, that's going to become what people expect to see, so I expect single spacing to become the standard. I bet that will have more of an effect on changing people's minds than "expert" opinions.

How so when no published material uses a double space? Did anyone notice and change their approach because of it? Why should HTML rendering change that?

People double space because that is what they were taught. People single space because that is what they were taught. Few people make the effort to change their ways for something they perceive as trivial and which they don't even notice while reading every single day anyway.

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

#109

Post by graywh »

flatline wrote: post #38
apl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will continue to double-space until I'm dead. Do you have a reason for doing so?

I do - deeply ingrained muscle memory from a touch typing class in high school, conditioned over years.

My muscle memory (using 2 spaces) after ~6 months of typing class was so conditioned it made it impossible to help my teacher evaluation some new software that used 1 space.

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

#110

Post by kijinbear »

jeromec wrote: post #93
apotheon wrote: post #2

He's amusingly wrong in his certainty that everybody else is wrong. Two spaces grew out of a typographic convention of using a 1.5-width space that was favored by typesetters for proportional typespaces because typewriters didn't have half-width spaces represented on their keyboards. The actually "correct" approach would be 1.5-character width spaces, because even in proportional typefaces a little extra space serves…

Another writing convention I read long ago which grew out of typewriter limitation is placing a comma or period within quotation marks when not part of the quotation as in: I'm a fully qualified "hacker." The period is not part of the quotation, but American writing style suggests it should still go within the quotation marks. America appears to be the only English speaking country to have this writing style; it's no…

Even in America, MLA says you should place commas and periods outside quotation marks (unless they're part of the quote), whereas Chicago says you should place them outside. I prefer to put them outside quotation marks; there's a reason why this style is called "logical punctuation". MLA usually gets ignored in America, though.
Post reply on HN