excellent!

[winterbadger]

Julian Assange is wrong about so many things, IMO. I know many people think he's a fine fellow and would disagree with me in saying he should be ganched and filleted.

But this is, surely, one that we can all agree on.

Comments

[magaidhbhan.livejournal.com]

Guilty as charged.

I learned about a year ago that it's incorrect to use 2 spaces -- unfortunately, my habits are pretty deeply ingrained, and I haven't yet managed to train myself out of it. For the sake of the [theoretical] editor of my [unfinished] book, I'll try to fix it in that (this actually reminded me that I haven't been thinking about spacing as I've been composing it, which definitely means that it's full of blah blah blah.--Blah.)

[wolfette]

well, I was taught to use two spaces after a full stop when I learned to type. It was the correct thing to do then, in the days of typewriters, and it's a habit one continues with computers and word processors.

And I will continue to use two spaces after a full stop. Always.

[winterbadger]

I'm sorry to hear that.

[snolan.livejournal.com]

Farhad is wrong. There are two very good reasons to insert two spaces after every period.

Typists typing on manual and electric typewriters did it for a long time, they were trained to do it because with mono-spaced letters the extra space ...more clearly delimited the end and beginning of a new idea. I first learned to type in an actual typing class, before mere mortals could afford computers. I was taught two spaces. That was in the early 1980s.

The second reason is already hinted at; clearer separation of ideas. Each sentence is an idea, complete and whole, able to stand on it's own. You link ideas within paragraphs, but you separate them with white space too.

One could argue that with modern proportional fonts and computer controlled kerning the fundamental need is gone, but having extra white space does not hurt; and it still helps to separate complete sentences. Does it have to be two whole spaces? Probably not; but remember, many of us learned to type before kerning and proportional fonts made it possible to place 1.67 characters of white space between sentences and 1.314 lines of space between paragraphs. Farhad can stuff it.

[wolfette]

this :-)

No, Farhad is not wrong.

[winterbadger]

I first learned to type in an actual typing class, before mere mortals could afford computers. I was taught two spaces. That was in the early 1980s.

The world has moved on since then, as I'm pretty sure you know. Do you still do everything else the way you did it 30 years ago?

Each sentence is an idea, complete and whole, able to stand on it's own.

Its own, for heaven's sake. Apparently you are doctrinaire about obsolete typographical practices, but quite careless about basic spelling and punctuation.

but you separate them with white space too.

Funny, I find a period and a space quite enough to do that. I don't add an extra space, any more than I do an extra period.

One could argue that with modern proportional fonts and computer controlled kerning the fundamental need is gone

Yes, indeed one could. In fact, that's exactly what he does argue. And it's a pretty darn convincing argument.

Farhad can stuff it.

And so, my dear sir, can you.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

For me it's a non-issue. I automatically type two spaces after a period because that's the way Sister Kathleen taught me to type back in my Business Typing class. Then the word processing program thoughtfully takes out one of those spaces when it formats my text into proportional type. So you end up not having that annoying extra space to look at, and my thumb can still do what it's been doing for the last four decades as it double-hits the space bar. Ain't technology grand?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I'm perfectly happy double spacing. That's because I like a clear gap between sentences. One space, regardless of typography makes the gap after a comma and a full stop identical (as this paragraph demonstrates).

[shy-kat.livejournal.com]

I hate two spaces after periods. And I really mega-hate the fact that 6th ed. APA style requires it (5th ed. didn't--are we moving backward?). It's particularly annoying for those of us who switch between different style guides for every project.

[shy-kat.livejournal.com]

Also, why is "but I was taught it that way" an excuse for not changing something? It's amazing the number of no-longer-if-ever-quite-right grammar rules people were taught.

[winterbadger]

"I was taught that seventy bazillion years ago by Miss Thistlebottom, so I can never change" seems to be the common excuse for all sorts of preposterous and ridiculous laziness and boneheadedness when it comes to matters of writing. I can only presume that these are people who live by the precept that what is once written can never be unwritten and that once taught something, they can never change.

They would be very happy in a fundamentalist Islamic state, or a Renaissance Italian monastery, but I wonder how they manage to function in the modern world without cell phones, CDs or MP3 players, email and all the other attributes of the Internet, food processors, cable or satellite television, or (in some cases) automatic transmission. They're the people on Downton Abbey who are appalled at the idea of electric lights ("who knows where all those little bits of electricity are going when you're not looking?"