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

#151

Post by recursive » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:45 PM UTC

Theodores wrote: post #117

jakub_g wrote: post #104

Interesting thing is, living in Europe, AFAIR I never heard about "use two spaces" rule until now (even if in a long monospace plaintext, I might have subconsciously used it sometimes to disambiguate). If I saw that in a Word document, however, I would have thought the author was a technically-illiterate person who puts extra spaces around commas, quotes, parentheses etc. or uses 10 spaces instead of 1 tab for indent…

I only just worked out that the two spaces I see in text that I format must invariably come from Word docs exported as text. I am from the eight bit era so I intuitively save bytes where I can.

Not only. Some of us just always type like that. In my case, I almost never use Word, so this change is not going to affect me.

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

#152

Post by snazz » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

slap_shot wrote: post #150

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?

Some older typewriters had no 1 or 0 keys: https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/3huau8/t...

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

#153

Post by leephillips » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:46 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #143

riahi wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a key punctuation difference between North American and UK English. In NA, we use the dot here, but not in the UK. Actually, I’ve started to adopt the UK convention, because I think it looks neater.

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

#154

Post by sbuk » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

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…

According to the OED and paraphrased from the 1989 edition — arguably before spellcheckers were widespread; the use of -ize, for instance, is dependant on the root of the word. Words that stem from Greek, with the transitive sense of ‘make or conform to, or treat in the way of, the thing expressed by the derivation’, or ‘to act some person or character, do or follow some practice’. Words formed (in French or English) on Latin adjectives and nouns (esp. on derivative adjectives in -al, -ar, -an, etc.), mostly with the transitive sense. Words from later sources. Words formed on ethnic adjectives, and the like, chiefly transitive but sometimes intransitive. Words formed on names of persons, sometimes with the intransitive Greek sense of ‘to act like, or in accordance with’. From names of substances, chemical and other; in the transitive sense of ‘to charge, impregnate, treat, affect, or influence with’.

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

#155

Post by RandomBacon » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 1:58 PM UTC

Zanni wrote: post #64

mydongle wrote: post #52

Where did people learn to double space? I've never had anyone even mention such a thing in school.

Typing classes. That would be typing on an actual typewriter, not "keyboarding" on a computer.

I was taught double spacing when learning how to write. The teachers specifically mentioned to write using an extra space between sentences.

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

#156

Post by yellowapple » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

Well then I guess that's another reason I won't use Word (sure you can turn it off, and it's a minor annoyance at most, but still).

You one-spacers will have to pry my double-spaced sentences from my cold dead fingers. It's been scientifically proven to be at least marginally superior¹ (no matter how badly The Verge wants to try to convince anyone otherwise), it's substantially less ugly than using a single space, and it's easier for machines to parse (a period followed by two spaces or a line break is unambiguously the end of a sentence, whereas a period followed by a single space is - unless the two-space rule is in effect - ambiguous).

This is one substantial reason why, to me, no website will ever be quite as readable as a PDF (let alone print). At least a PDF-outputting typesetter (e.g. LaTeX) can intelligently account for this and add the additional spacing, and it looks fantastic and is delightfully readable when combined with properly-justified text (also a rarity in websites - and Word documents, for that matter). But with HTML, I can't even emulate it with double-spaces; browsers boneheadedly replace even the double-spaces with single spaces.

I certainly don't buy the "saving time" aspect, either: Ifwereallycaredaboutsavingtime,thenwhybotherwithspacesatall?Imaginehowmanykeyswecouldfitintoakeyboardifwegotridofthespacebarentirely!Nottomentionhowmanybyteswe'dsaveineverytextfile. (More seriously, unless you really really suck at typing, one v. two spaces should be entirely insignificant in terms of time spent) (EDIT: and I'm only half-joking about that suggestion; there are plenty of examples of people who don't use any spaces at all after sentence-terminating punctuation, so the aforementioned example is just taking things to their logical conclusion)

----

¹: https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13414-018-1527-6 (The Verge mentioned this in the article, irrationally downplaying its significance)

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

#157

Post by frank2 » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 2:14 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.

I can't recall ever seeing three hyphens used to signify an em dash in a document published on the net. (I added the word "published" to account for the possibility of the existence of a markup language I am unaware of that employs your three-hyphen convention.) I am fastidious enough about usage that I probably would've noticed and remembered.

In my experience, its always two hyphens (or space, hyphen, hyphen, space).

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

#158

Post by chrismorgan » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 2:20 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

Huh, didn’t know “alright” wasn’t universally hunky-dory. In Australian English it’s a common word and that’s how it’s spelled, and I believe “all right” would be considered actively wrong.

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

#159

Post by Spivak » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 2:21 PM UTC

MereInterest wrote: post #128

prmph wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please can you give an example? That would make your point easier to understand

Is the dot a period at the end of a sentence? In that case, there should be an m-space following the period, and line breaks are allowed after the period. Is the dot an abbreviation of an honorific (e.g. Mr. So-and-so)? In that case, there should only be an n-space, and line breaks between the honorific and the name should be forbidden. Is the dot an abbreviation of a unit (e.g. 3 lb.)? In that case, the period may o…

Why have the period perform double duty?

I've seen sentences like "The machine can lift a maximum of 3 lbs.."

Why would you treat "3 lbs." as anything other than a regular word?

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

#160

Post by verytrivial » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 2:29 PM UTC

I stopped using Word when I need section numbering that wasn't completely broken. I am therefore not massively surprised they've left that broken for 20 years and decided instead to take sides in a white-space religious war. You know, to "help users."