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

#231

Post by Groxx » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

taeric wrote: post #191

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 m…

How much of the book spacing is to save physical space? A fair number of larger / more expensive books that I have on hand, and nearly all non-fiction (especially technical) ones, do have additional space between paragraphs.

Potentially all the paperback novels I have within reach do not, though, agreed. They also have far smaller margins, tighter spaces between lines, and thinner paper.

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

#232

Post by wickedwiesel » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 6:55 PM UTC

domador wrote: post #229

I grew up putting two spaces after a period. A few years ago, after reading an article arguing for one space, I decided to try single spaces, as open-mindedly as possible. However, after a few days I ended up going back to the double space, since the single space just looked plain ugly to me. To me single spaces make all sentences look like run-on sentences, at least visually. On a different, though my side lost this…

WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM WITH ALL CAPS?

Personally, this to me (a digital immigrant from the EU), is like shouting at someone. Apologies for the rudeness.

I wonder if this is universal among people who migrated to the digital world in the 90s?

Is there a universal way of vocalizing net-lingo? Or how does this evolve over generations (do digital natives speak the same lingo that we learned?)

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

#233

Post by svat » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 6:58 PM UTC

pxx wrote: post #227

svat wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the comments there concisely summarizes history better than modern typographers do: > I think most books don't do this any more [have wider spaces between sentences]. Newspapers certainly don't. It's way too much trouble escaping out all the abbreviations. If you need wider spaces between sentences you also don't want them indiscriminately after every period, so you need to exercise more care and indicate them…

Wait, what's the \null for and shouldn't there be a \ after Soc.?

Yes there should be a \ after “Soc.” Proofreading the typeset output might have caught this error. :-)

The “\null” after “NASA” is to show an example where the heuristic fails in the other direction: the “.” after the uppercase letter won't be considered to end the sentence, so you need to either type `\hbox{NASA}.` or `NASA\null.` (where `\null` is an abbreviation for `\hbox{}` i.e. an empty box) or something like that — something so that the period doesn't immediately follow an uppercase letter.

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

#234

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

pxx wrote: post #227

svat wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the comments there concisely summarizes history better than modern typographers do: > I think most books don't do this any more [have wider spaces between sentences]. Newspapers certainly don't. It's way too much trouble escaping out all the abbreviations. If you need wider spaces between sentences you also don't want them indiscriminately after every period, so you need to exercise more care and indicate them…

Wait, what's the \null for and shouldn't there be a \ after Soc.?

[deleted]

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

#235

Post by jwilk » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 7:17 PM UTC

weinzierl wrote: post #187

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…

In TeX or LaTeX the command to turn the extra space after the period on and off is called \frenchspacing . I remember this because the proof reader of my theses asked me why I had so inconsistent spacing between the sentences and told me that I should stick with a single space. I remember that I had little time to figure it out and that I was very happy when I found that the \frenchspacing command would do it. I don'…

\frenchspacing = single spacing

\nonfrenchspacing = double spacing (default)

They are both TeX commands.

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

#236

Post by jakub_g » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 7:53 PM UTC

sideshowb wrote: post #222

enriquto wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Interesting. I have once written for a journal that insisted on latex but can't say I found it a good way to work (and that's after plenty of experience with it including a phd thesis). I can see how it might be better for math heavy writing, especially 10 years ago, but most of the basic latex math commands work in word now anyway. If that field frowns on word so much it should just insist on latex for paper submiss…

A friend of mine is a physics PhD. Most journals require to use their exact LaTeX settings for every little detail in order to have an article published.

Which means quite a lot of menial work to redo the article each time you apply, get refused, and want to send to another journal.

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

#237

Post by taeric » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

Groxx wrote: post #231

taeric wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 m…

How much of the book spacing is to save physical space? A fair number of larger / more expensive books that I have on hand, and nearly all non-fiction (especially technical) ones, do have additional space between paragraphs. Potentially all the paperback novels I have within reach do not, though, agreed. They also have far smaller margins, tighter spaces between lines, and thinner paper.

Not sure that matters. My point was that it was a frugal markup. You don't do two spaces because you want more space, per se. You do it to signal a period at the end of a sentence.

Similarly, we don't ever start a paragraph with spaces. Very common to indent opening paragraphs, though. Why don't we space at the first sentence? Because we already have a clear marker for that.

To that end Word is correct to flag two spaces. In all views. Because it is a wysiwyg. You are not writing a markup, you are seeing the rendered target.

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

#238

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 8:28 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #41

CamperBob2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practice originally came from typesetting. If anything, it's more relevant and appropriate now than it was in the days when your font choices were limited to 12-point Pica and Elite.

That's not true. Go look at the us constitution, which is not typeset. There are bigger spaces after periods, see article I section 2, lines 3 and 4 for two examples.

[deleted]

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

#239

Post by CamperBob2 » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 8:33 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #41

CamperBob2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The practice originally came from typesetting. If anything, it's more relevant and appropriate now than it was in the days when your font choices were limited to 12-point Pica and Elite.

That's not true. Go look at the us constitution, which is not typeset. There are bigger spaces after periods, see article I section 2, lines 3 and 4 for two examples.

That's a weird non-sequitur that has nothing to do with the topic, considering that the Constitution was handwritten, but it's still interesting to read about how things were done in that era:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Shallus

https://www.vox.com/2015/7/29/9061831/declaration-of-indepen...

So, thanks for the diversion down that particular rabbit hole, I guess.

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

#240

Post by omnimus » Sat, Apr 25, 2020, 9:15 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #124

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…

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…

Ragged right is not somehow inferior to full justified. It automatically creates rythm that keeps you engaged. There is reason most graphic profesionals prefer look of ragged right.

It's also pretty hard to have quality full justified text. To keep spaces consistent you need hyphenation and advanced typography algorythms like latex microtype package and paragraph composer like the one in Indesign. And it will still not be enough. You will need to have experienced human make adjustments - fix hyphenation and fiddle with settings. When you see full justified done well there is someone putting quite bit of effort so it looks well.

The reason it is so hard is that if you take somehow optimal length of 70 characters you will have only about 10 spaces on line add to that limit of 2-3 consecutive hyphenations at the end of lines and few longer words will get you to pretty tight spots. It's a balacne battle. Sure increase number of characters on line and then it will look even but long lines make things much harder to read and its the worst problem because you will not be able to catch next line.

Most often you will see justified text full of rivers or crazy big differences between space widths - both more distracting than ragged right. For some reason some people think its more grand and authorative but it is quite dogmatic view.

The main reason why it's used in books is that it saves space. On 400 page book it can make difference. But the publishers employ dedicated expert who does this work and goes page by page so everything is in order.