Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors

#141

Post by tqkxzugoaupvwqr » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:01 PM UTC

JdeBP wrote: post #62

basicallydan wrote: post #10

This may not seem like a big deal, but consider the effect that such an influential source of “correctness” can have on the general sense of what is correct. Spell checkers like Word’s are responsible for the “z” in British English being demonised. Once upon a time, according to linguist Gretchen McCullen, it was common in British English to use both z and s. But somewhere along the line, automated spell checkers cat…

This sort of thing long pre-dates spell checkers, as other have pointed out. Here's an older example for you. The word "alright" existed fairly quietly and unobtrusively in the English language for decades, as a formation similar to "altogether" and "always", until Fowler and other authorities got hold of it after World War 1 and demonized it. * http://jdebp.uk./FGA/all-right-variants.html

I always considered “all right” to be incorrect. Interesting.

Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors

#142

Post by bottle2 » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:02 PM UTC

AgentOrange1234 wrote: post #138

MereInterest wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Format to personal style on open. Format to project style on save. The project style is then consistent, but irrelevant.

This sounds good and might work for programmers who are working in well-established languages with mature tooling. For me, I’m opening so many kinds of text files, I’d need a parade of parsers and pretty-printers to pull it off. I can’t see it being a realistic option in the near term.

Same here. In a given week, I’ve opened files across 6 different {programming} languages

Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors

#143

Post by kwhitefoot » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:10 PM UTC

riahi wrote: post #133

viraptor wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially the overloaded ".". Apart from usage as a decimal point and elipsis, where it's obvious, what are the overloaded cases?

Abbreviations in the middle of a sentence (When he was talking with Mr. St. Cyr, he saw a bird. Then...”)

Except that in the tradition current when I was growing up neither Mr nor St require a dot because they both include the last letter of the word. The dot is meant to indicate that letters following it have been omitted.

Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors

#144

Post by Jemm » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:13 PM UTC

Double spaces are considerably more readable, especially for those of us with visual impairments.

Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors

#145

Post by Retric » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

bottle2 wrote: post #140

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that's why that happened. Typographically, I don't think you can compare the visual effect of an extra period in properly rendered right-justified text with the effect when it's buried in the usual ragged-right default on the web. In the early 90s most monitors didn't have the resolution to handle full justification without making it look like crap. In theory it would have been helpful if there had been enough for…

I don’t know. It sounds like you’re older and smarter than I, but whenever I see two spaces at the end of a sentence, I fix it to make it one space. It looks plain wrong to my brain

Double spacing between paragraphs is surprisingly helpful with smudged text on physical paper. Many linguistic conventions seem arbitrary, but are really about redundancy.

Punctuation could have replaced spaces.just like capitalization of the first letter in a new sentence,it’s helpful to make things as obvious as possible. Is that period a typo or are those supposed to be different sentences?

Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors

#146

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:19 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors

#147

Post by jasoneckert » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:27 PM UTC

I prefer a single space myself.

However, my copyeditor recently told me that, in order to promote distancing, MLA is going back to two spaces after a period for the remainder of this year...

Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors

#148

Post by quicklime » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:35 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #114

One thing that's nice about being a programmer is that I haven't thought about any mechanics of text formatting for many years. When I save a file, it just gets reformatted according to rules that were set up exactly once. I have no idea whether or not I use spaces or tabs, or whether there are semicolons at the end of lines, or whether it's "} else {" or "}\nelse {". It makes me sad that the least technical users ha…

Being a programmer won't save you from this particular style war. If there's a comment in your code with a sentence that begins with a double space, your code formatter probably won't flag or remove it in the same way that MS Word will. And it's likely shown in a monospace font, which makes it more noticeable.

How many spaces do people put after a full stop in comments in their code?

I go with one, but Vim's J and gq commands annoyingly insert two spaces when joining sentences from separate lines. I'd love it if someone could tell me how to fix this.

Edit: found it, the command is "set nojoinspaces"

Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors

#149

Post by bmn__ » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:36 PM UTC

evgen wrote: post #102

jefftk wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It makes no sense to replace a wider sentence space with two regular spaces. Using a double space is a simple way of telling the computer that you want a wider space, because otherwise it can't tell that you mean the end of a sentence.

Similar to the spacing convention, we use two hyphens to signify an en dash and three for an em dash.

> we use two hyphens to signify an en dash

That depends on whether this functions as a poor man's input method (e.g. like in LibreOffice Writer), or is to be mentally applied by the reader.

The former is a very agreeable solution, the latter provokes flaming.

Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors

#150

Post by slap_shot » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:42 PM UTC

rs23296008n1 wrote: post #97

I remember a typing teacher being very serious about two spaces after the dot[1]. He was also serious about the letter O being an acceptable substitute for a zero "0". Fortunately both of these rules are now firmly in the past along with witch burning. This is progress. [1] yeah, I could call it a period or a full stop. But its also a dot. Variety is the spice of life as is properly finishing your

> He was also serious about the letter O being an acceptable substitute for a zero "0".

Whoa, never heard that one. Did that have any major traction at some point? What was the point?