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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

#251

Post by opo »

insulanian wrote: post #94
PunksATawnyFill wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re faster to use. They’re consistent between fonts.

> They’re faster to use. That's not really an argument. Every code editor can be configured to interpret the tab key as desired number of spaces.

Do any code editors also treat a delete of one of these spaces as removing the tab width size? (I've never seen it, but maybe there are ones that do that.) What tends to happen is that yes, the tab enters the N spaces, but if you have to move code around, you can find yourself deleting a lot of spaces.

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

#252

Post by leephillips »

xxpor wrote: post #206
leephillips wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context 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.

Meanwhile, the house style at the NYT is to use periods between each letter of an acronym in certain cases, e.g. W.H.O., D.O.D, and U.N., but not NASA for some reason. I've had to occasionally append to existing texts that use the period between each letter style, and I have to say, it's incredibly annoying to physically type.

In regard to the NYT style: that’s because WHO, DOD, and UN are not in fact acronyms, while NASA is. So it’s entirely consistent.

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

#253

Post by dependenttypes »

MattBlissett wrote: post #167
dependenttypes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wish that there were spell checkers that offered en-GB-oxendict.

GNU Aspell has an en_GB-ize-w_accents dictionary, which I think is what's needed. The source seems to be here: http://wordlist.aspell.net/ It's the UN's official version of English [1], and my employer's, and it's widely used in scientific publications. I'd like to use it in Firefox, but the British dictionary extension[2] accepts both versions. I have "feces colored airplane modeling" marked as misspellings, and "di…

Thank you for that. Would you happen to know if Hunspell (I think that this is what firefox uses at least on linux) has something similar or if I can use this dictionary with it?

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

#254

Post by Groxx »

taeric wrote: post #247
Groxx wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If people are double-spacing on a wysiwyg, doesn't that imply it's not frugal markup?

They are using markup where they shouldn't be. If, in word, I type italic text using stars, that just means I'm wrong in that context. Similarly, if I use escapes, such that I expect \n to add a new line, I'm just wrong. That doesn't make it less useful where it originated. Edit: I amusingly had to try twice to get the italic text there. Double stars did not bold. I don't know how to escape the stars.

Word has never had markup though. Nor have most people ever written markup. Why would they be trying to write markup?

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

#255

Post by weinzierl »

jwilk wrote: post #235
weinzierl wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So the French don't like too much space after punctuation but are keen on space before it. Typography is a weird thing.

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

#256

Post by insulanian »

opo wrote: post #251
insulanian wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They’re faster to use. That's not really an argument. Every code editor can be configured to interpret the tab key as desired number of spaces.

Do any code editors also treat a delete of one of these spaces as removing the tab width size? (I've never seen it, but maybe there are ones that do that.) What tends to happen is that yes, the tab enters the N spaces, but if you have to move code around, you can find yourself deleting a lot of spaces.

I'm using VS Code and it does do that. It deletes back to the previous indentation level.

In the case when you move code around you will anyway go for Tab/Shift+Tab in any editor.

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

#257

Post by sideshowb »

jakub_g wrote: post #236
sideshowb wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, that's daft. Most journals I use now have a "your paper your way" policy for initial submissions and only require conforming to format requirements when it's near acceptance. I'm quite happy to use their latex template at that stage particularly if the journal is open access and not charging exorbitant fees.

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

#258

Post by enriquto »

jakub_g wrote: post #236
sideshowb wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

What kind of menial work do you mean? Isn't that just a matter of changing the class of your document? Why would you need to change the text of the article itself?

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

#259

Post by jefftk »

dubya wrote: post #250
jefftk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Converting "fi" into "fi" only requires a lookup table, though fonts can do some pretty fancy things: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference-Manual/... Knowing that "Mr. Smith." is intra-sentence but "Me. Smith." is inter-sentence is well beyond what fonts can do, however.

I thought the rule was that ligatures shouldn't cross syllable boundaries. Like the fi in "fine" can be replaced but not the fi in "barfing", so it would need to be a bit more than a lookup table. Or maybe a dictionary-sized lookup table isn't a problem anymore.

I see https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/50660/when-shoul... suggesting this, but I don't believe any fonts implement this.

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

#260

Post by aembleton »

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…

When I did my Pitman typing qualifications in the UK in the late 90s, 2 spaces was mandatory. That is where I learnt it from, and still keep doing it to this day as muscle memory.
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