SHP Forums

BBP wrote:

DeadPoolX wrote: I don't think most people care, to be honest. I've written numerous research papers in the past and even though different writing guides say "single space after a period" I never did that. No professor I've ever had commented or corrected me.

You must have a nice techie study field then. In all classes I followed on history (my first study) and musicology and language, it's like teachers love to stumble on things like that, like it finally gives them an excuse to give you a lower grade.

My field of study was psychology. Not exactly the most "tech-oriented" field. Then again, maybe my professors either didn't care or they were used to using two spaces as well.

JasefWisener wrote:I've had people in classes that I've taken that have gotten lower grades on papers for using two spaces. It's unnecessary to use two spaces after a period now, so I guess I agree with the article.

I think that's nuts (taking points off for two spaces), but then again, teaching is often subjective. That might account for some professors taking points off for double-spacing and others who simply don't care or even taught it that way.

In some ways, that doesn't really surprise me. I had a teacher in high school once verbally "correct me" in front of the class because I spelled "theater" as "theatre." Both are acceptable, but he said to me: "This is America. We don't spell it with an "re."

Nice way to promote the "Americans are assholes" stereotype. Of course, the UK might react the same way to American English. At least in Canada there's a combination (which often leads to some unintentionally interesting situations) of American and British English. So if I want to write "theater" or "theatre," both are considered correct.

MusicallyInspired wrote:I didn't find the article tonal at all but I'm not a double-spacer so I don't really take offense.

I didn't take offense to the article because of the information. As much as I dislike using one space after a period, it's still the accepted format nowadays.

My annoyance was with the overall tone. He wrote as if his readers were morons.

Collector wrote:I was never taught the double space "rule" when I took typing. I never used it, out side of by accident, but it never bothered me when others did. Perhaps, as suggested, he is just reacting to extreme double space advocates that he has encountered, but when writing an article for the internet that will be read by far greater numbers than the ones he is reacting to, he should be addressing that audience, not just those few. As so many these days, he comes across as someone that needs to go back to school to take a few classes in rhetoric. Really, what was the point in bringing in Assange as justification for his argument? The use of ad hominem attacks is the recourse of someone incapable of logically presenting his argument.

Exactly.

Collector wrote:

DeadPoolX wrote:Mono-spaced fonts were all that existed

Not to nitpick, but this was only true of typewriters, teletypes and early computers/terminals. Type setters have had access to proportional fonts since the beginning of printing. But then, that is the point of the schism between type setters and the average writer.

Well, I'm thinking about word processing on computers like the Apple II. Fonts on that sucker were definitely not proportional. I also remember word processing on a 286 and the fonts used weren't proportional as well. I didn't use Windows (unless I absolutely had no other choice) until Win95 was released, so maybe my viewpoint is skewed here.

Again, I'm a reader and I never felt like he was calling me a moron. I didn't feel like he was calling anyone a moron.

DeadPoolX wrote:Well, I'm thinking about word processing on computers like the Apple II. Fonts on that sucker were definitely not proportional. I also remember word processing on a 286 and the fonts used weren't proportional as well.

Well I said early computers.

DeadPoolX wrote:I didn't use Windows (unless I absolutely had no other choice) until Win95 was released, so maybe my viewpoint is skewed here.

That explains the breaking point for you. FON, (Pre TTF) fonts are bitmapped and monospace. TTF fonts are vector based and usually, though not always, proportional. Win3x had TTF fonts, but if you didn't use Windows much until 95 you would have not been using TTFs until the mid 90's.

Hmm. I've read books voraciously all my life, and I've been writing and publishing prose, poetry etc. since I finished high school (17 years ago now), and I've always followed the one-space rule: one space after a comma, one after a full stop, one after a question/exclamation mark, one before a starting bracket and one after. Why? Because that's the way I've always seen it in books, and because it simply looks right that way, at least to me.

On the other hand, I don't find anything inherently wrong about double-spacing, and I certainly don't think it's a cardinal sin or anything. The way the author of this article puts it, any double-spacer deserves to be jailed at the very least. It may be a crime to typographers, but to me, it is a matter of supreme indifference.

Collector is spot on about the ad hominem attack on Julian Assange.

I learned to double-space in college, where many professors prescribed to the double-space edict and required papers to be typed a certain way. If a paper didn't follow the edict, it was rejected.

Double-spacing was also reinforced by programming, where white-space is a good thing and helps readability.

oberonqa wrote:I learned to double-space in college, where many professors prescribed to the double-space edict and required papers to be typed a certain way. If a paper didn't follow the edict, it was rejected.

Double-spacing was also reinforced by programming, where white-space is a good thing and helps readability.

I was taught to type on a typewriter, so naturally I was taught the two-space rule. It was never explained to me (until now) that it was only monospace typewriters that this "rule" applied. Even now I use two spaces. 'Twill be a hard habit to break.

Fortunately most online message boards trim extra whitespace and replace multiple spaces with just one... (here is an example [in the editor window with 4 spaces between words, but the post will only have a single space between words].)

..dane

That is just the nature of HTML. It only recognizes a single trailing space. If you want to use leading or double spaces you need to use the non-breaking space code, "&nbsp;" Each one represents a single space. The use of pre-formatted "<pre>" tages would work, too. The board does not allow the use of HTML directly, so that ability would need to be added through a custom BB code.

I remember in grade 8 typing class I was tought to put two spaces after a full stop, but not on a computer because I was told most word processing applications will automatically make the space extra long.

In any case, I haven't done it for years.

I found the author's tone a little confrontational. I also found it ironic that he felt justified in nitpicking about double vs. single spaces after a period, but blatantly ignored good practices for writing on the screen (vs. writing for print) by using overly long paragraphs. I guess we all have our things that drive us crazy.

I originally learned to type using two spaces because most of the people teaching me were originally taught on typewriters. However, at some point, I learned that the two spaces were for monospace fonts and typewriters. Eventually, I dropped the habit when it seemed no longer necessary.

The problem with "rules" like that is that there is never a clear break in when it changes. It takes time for it to become common practice, regardless of what the publishing industry may say. Usually people stick to how they first learned it as being the "right" way.

Maiandra wrote:I found the author's tone a little confrontational. I also found it ironic that he felt justified in nitpicking about double vs. single spaces after a period, but blatantly ignored good practices for writing on the screen (vs. writing for print) by using overly long paragraphs. I guess we all have our things that drive us crazy.

Hmm. What's wrong with overly long paragraphs? *curious* As far as I know, there's no rule against those. However, there's a rule against overly long sentences - you know, run-on sentences. The problem is that if a sentence goes over two lines (or three lines tops), by the time it's over, people forget how it began and have to go back and re-read it from the top, and then they get irritated...

There's no rule against it, but relatively few people online have the attention span to read anything more than five sentences when grouped together. That's why it's good to make short paragraphs, even if it means writing a ton of them.

Collector wrote:That is just the nature of HTML. It only recognizes a single trailing space. If you want to use leading or double spaces you need to use the non-breaking space code, "&nbsp;" Each one represents a single space. The use of pre-formatted "<pre>" tages would work, too. The board does not allow the use of HTML directly, so that ability would need to be added through a custom BB code.

Yes, after reading your reply I realized I misspoke. I don't know why.. I noticed that about HTML a dozen or so years ago when I was a wee laddy teaching myself HTML. thanks for the correction.

..dane

AndreaDraco wrote:Unfortunately, I can't relate to this issue.

Here in Italy, as soon as we start typewriting, every teacher tell us to put only one space after a period and only one space after every comma. It's just the way it is.

What he says
Same goes for Denmark!

Regarding overlong paragraphs. One of the first rules of writing papers I was thought was; short paragraphs. Short sentences and no more than five in a paragraphs was always to be prefered. I've had teachers who'd actually take points off if you had more than one or two long paragraphs. I think it came from having to break so many people of the habit of seriously long sentences and paragraphs, especially German speakers tend to carry that over into their English writing.