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

#191

Post by taeric » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

DanielKehoe wrote: post #71

We debated this in 1993 on the www-talk mailing list [1]. Terry Allen (an editor at O'Reilly) wanted rendered HTML documents to follow Tex conventions with extra space after a period. Marc Andreessen (still at NCSA in 1993) pointed out browser developers couldn’t do the syntactic analysis required to distinguish the end of sentences from inter-sentence periods. Guido van Rossum (working on Python version 1.0 at the t…

This doesn't paint python in a better light to me. Two spaces is not so that you render two spaces, it just made it easy to distinguish the end of a sentence. Calling it mostly propaganda just shows even then the python crowd got strings of the day wrong.

Is also why two line feeds indicates end of paragraph. Works way easier than requiring container markers. Disagree? Just look at in house Java projects to see how many screw up the doc thinking they did multiple paragraphs.

And yes, that is the same thing. Books do not have extra space between paragraphs. It is a stylistic choice, period.

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

#192

Post by taeric » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 4:13 PM UTC

quicklime wrote: post #148

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…

It is even more amusing in Java. Many folks essentially try to do markdown, not realizing that they are probably writing one giant paragraph.

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

#193

Post by dqpb » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

DanielKehoe wrote: post #71

We debated this in 1993 on the www-talk mailing list [1]. Terry Allen (an editor at O'Reilly) wanted rendered HTML documents to follow Tex conventions with extra space after a period. Marc Andreessen (still at NCSA in 1993) pointed out browser developers couldn’t do the syntactic analysis required to distinguish the end of sentences from inter-sentence periods. Guido van Rossum (working on Python version 1.0 at the t…

Since someone must, I’ll go ahead and propose we instead use a single tab after periods if it’s the end of a sentence. :)

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

#194

Post by wasdfff » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

This ruined me when I first tried to use gtypist. Couldn’t easily see the double space and got like every line wrong the first go around.

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

#195

Post by ken » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 4:23 PM UTC

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…

While we're on the topic of typographical prejudice, I confess that if I see a Microsoft Word document at all, I tend to assume the author is not so technically literate.

The intersection of "people I've seen use Word" and "people who know how to write a program" is extremely small.

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

#196

Post by shrimp_emoji » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 4:32 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

Now if only C/C++ could join them. :3

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

#197

Post by Skunkleton » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #171

DanielKehoe wrote: post #71

We debated this in 1993 on the www-talk mailing list [1]. Terry Allen (an editor at O'Reilly) wanted rendered HTML documents to follow Tex conventions with extra space after a period. Marc Andreessen (still at NCSA in 1993) pointed out browser developers couldn’t do the syntactic analysis required to distinguish the end of sentences from inter-sentence periods. Guido van Rossum (working on Python version 1.0 at the t…

We should have gone with 1.5 spaces as a compromise.

  Why compromise when you can do both?   With three spaces everyone wins!

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

#198

Post by MereInterest » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

Spivak wrote: post #159

MereInterest wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's not a matter of choosing what the period does. It's a matter of codifying what it already does. Certainly, you can treat "3 lbs." as a regular word. That is another use case for a period, which also needs to be handled. That also means that a period can either appear inside a word, or between words.

The long story is that a period can mean many, many different things.

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

#199

Post by lloeki » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

leddt wrote: post #165

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'm French Canadian and I usually avoid the space before those characters because they have a tendency to wrap on a new line by themselves. You are supposed to use non breaking spaces but most tools won't do it automatically, and they are not trivial to type.

IIRC alt-space inserts a NBSP utf8 character on macOS and Linux basically anywhere. It’s been too long since I used Windows but I recall something like that working (maybe only in some select software though).

Now the visual feedback though... It usually appears as a regular space.

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

#200

Post by progval » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

> Microsoft has settled the great space debate

No, Microsoft doesn't get to "settle" a language issue.

This also reminds me that some (many?) French speaker believe upper-case accentuated letters (eg. É È À) are incorrect, just because it's impossible to type them on Windows (unless you know the right alt code, but most people don't) and typewriters.