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Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors

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

#211
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wow, what industry do you work in and for how long? Reasons for technical people to use word: 1. A non technical person may need to edit or even just comment on the document at some point 2. It's stupid, but in a lot situations people are conditioned to take an email with the real content attached in a word doc more seriously than a plain email. You could use a PDF to the same effect but see point 1. 3. Actually imo…

> Wow, what industry do you work in and for how long?

I don't know about the OP, but in the mathematics community you need to have a lot of confidence on yourself to write a paper in Word. It would be a much worse offense than using comic-sans, and it would likely be interpreted as a flamboyant deviation and unnecessary attention whoring.

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

#213
If I as an author disable the check and continue to use double spaces, would it stop flagging on my machine only, or on the readers' machines too? If only on my machine, then the option to stop the flagging would do no good to me and I would request Microsoft to stop flagging this.

Instead of making such determinations on English grammar/punctuation/spacing, I would recommend Microsoft to first improve the grammar checker in Word to implement the well-settled rules of grammar, where it is significantly lagging with nearly no developments since a decade or longer.

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

#214
post #195

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.

Are all the technical people you know eccentric Richard Stallman types? There’s definitely a subdemographic out there that would never touch Word, but out in the real world everyone (technical or not) uses word processors (almost always MS Word) to produce low effort documents.

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

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should have gone with 1.5 spaces as a compromise.

Or a slanted space, like a mezuzah.

Only for Ashkenazim/Chasidim. Sephardi and Mizrahi hang them vertically. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/ask-the-expert-slan...

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

#219

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?

Features of the typewriter I used in the 1970s as a kid (which was old even then):

(1) Did not have a "0" key. Use capital letter "O".

(2) Did not have a "1" key. Use lowercase letter "l".

(3) Did not have a "!" key. Type ".", then backspace, then type "'".

The typeface was designed to make this work well. The "l" looked close enough to a "1". The dimensions of "." and "'" were such that they fit together, and "'" did not have any curve to it that would look out of place on an exclamation mark.

Here's a photo of the exact same model: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/wUcAAOSwmftc8s45/s-l1600.jpg

Other features, while I'm at it:

(4) Had a cent sign in addition to dollar sign. This was nice because the symbol was used a lot in real life.

(5) Had a key to type 1/4 and 1/2.

(6) No backslash, of course. Which explains why old people mix this up so often. They aren't accustomed to there being two different ones they need to keep straight.

(7) That LOCK key above SHIFT physically locks the SHIFT key in the down position. I'm not sure what you'd call the mechanism, but it's something like a pawl. SHIFT would normally spring back up, but this blocks it from doing that. You push SHIFT down further to release it.

(8) You can load the typewriter with a ribbon that has red and black ink. (You can see red in the photo above.) There's a lever toward the right that controls this.

(9) There is no enter or carriage return key, of course. The whole carriage (top part that holds the paper) moves side to side as you type. The power comes from being spring loaded. When you want a new line, you grab that shiny lever at the top left and yank the whole carriage to the right. So you are returning the carriage to the start of the line.

(10) Note the TAB SET, TAB CLEAR, and TABULAR buttons. These work like a tab key on computer. You move to some column, push TAB SET, and it remembers that position mechanically. When you hit TABULAR, it moves to that position. Since the carriage is spring-loaded, this is quite lively. The carriage is metal and heavy (a few pounds?), and when you press TABULAR, it gets moving pretty good, and it slams pretty hard into the tab stop.

(11) The platen is the roller that the paper wraps around. You can see a knob on the left and the right that can be used to turn the platen. It turns in steps corresponding to the height of one line. But the button centered in the left knob lets you release that and turn it continuously. So it's kind of an snap to grid function that you can turn off and on. You can use this for typing superscripts and subscripts or other weird effects.

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

#220
post #3

Two spaces are the only civilized option, and I hope the world's numerous, two-space-loving lawyers use their now abundant spare time to lay into MSFT about this.

Agree.

If this prohibition really takes hold, I will start limiting all of my paragraphs to one sentence.

Who's with me?

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