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…
Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors
171–180 of 270 posts
Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors
#172One 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…
Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors
#173I 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?
Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors
#174We 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.
Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors
#175We 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.
Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I don’t know. It sounds like you’re older and smarter than I, but whenever I see two spaces at the end of a sentence, I fix it to make it one space. It looks plain wrong to my brain
It's kind of like trying to read tons of code with or without syntax highlighting.
Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors
#177We 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.
Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors
#178We 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…
Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors
#179The only feature I enjoyed more, was the time the computer slammed on the brakes (for no real) reason while I was merging (my fault because I did neglect to shut off that idiotic automatic brake feature). There is however, no way to disable the automatic door locking feature.
That reminds me--I need to tape a brick inside of one of the wheel wells so I can smash open one of the windows, so I don't freeze to death some snowy winter night.
Re: Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after a period as errors
#180One 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…