News: 1587988957

This is seriously going to mess up my whitespace codebase!!!!

Damn! The extra spaces I put in for comic effect got taken out! Guess that shows where The Reg falls in this debate!

I think it should be one tab.

This US quirk of holding on to typewriter-era double spaces almost cost me a job when I applied for a secretarial position after I moved from Europe (where I grew up) to the USA.

The temp agency had me take a touch-typing test that consisted of copying a document of about 70 sentences.

The computer ruled that I had made 72 typos. Turns out that I had consistently typed a single space after each sentence, thus accounting for 70 of the 'errors'.

To this day I maintain that the source text contained 70 errors and that I simply corrected them. :-)

I always used one space, because that's what books use or at least the ones I read did.

Like the author, when I learned to type it was what they taught. Like him I'll go on doing it because it's in my muscle memory. If you get hot under collar about it (and I've seen some amazingly angry rants on the subject, worse than Comic Sans) I'll tell you to worry about something that matters.

I won't tell you to get a sense of proportion, because Trin Tragula.

It doesn't matter - who uses Word anyway? I write all my letters in Excel. Plus use it for my shopping lists, notes and even once built a £20m invoicing system in it that connected to a massive database of all our purchasing contracts (Excel of course) that also linked up the management accountants clever stuff to work out how we could maximise our discounts by moving purchases around in time - plus printing quarterly invoices notn hideous spaghetti code because IT were too cheap to give me proper tools to do it... It took me 2 weeks, a pack of highlighter pens and a whiteboard to check all the formulae were correct. Mumble, mumble, I've used Excel for printing posters as well - double-spaced mumble, mumble...

One space after commas, 2 after full stops! Not that I really care, but I've hammered touch typing into my muscle memory and I can't stop it now after 35 years of repetition.

For decades, the global typographical standard has been to use a singe space after a period. To me, having grown up in Europe, two spaces looks like typographical stutter.

Thus, after moving to the US, back in my secretarial days I wrote a macro to auto-delete all double spaces that our tech sales reps insisted so diligently typed.

Later on as I migrated back into tech jobs, I was happy to see that browsers would not display consecutive spaces.

Unfortunately, it wasn't long before the editors discovered non-breaking spaces ( ). That really messed things up so I dusted off the old macro.

It become a war of sorts between the editor and myself until I was assigned a pair of F5 BIG-IP ADCs ten or fifteen years ago.

Imagine my glee when I implemented an iRule that automatically replaced all non-breaking and double spaces as soon as the editor submitted the text to the CMS. No matter how much they tried, they

discovered that it was not possible for them to get those double and non-breaking spaces to stick.

By the way, I never told anyone about that iRule...

Then, as noted below by another commenter, you did it WRONG! And, not only THAT, you INSISTED on impressing your WRONG opinion on everyone else!!

The standard is NOT a simple single space, the typographic standard is an EXTENDED single space

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing

since all but typesetting programs pretty much don't handle the extended space, we, the users, put in double spaces.

Unless you programmed to replace the double with the extended single, you messed up, and your typesetting looked terrible *and* only managed to annoy people like me who were forced to (try) to read your poorly-set type.

Reading through the article, double spacing was primarly when fixed size fonts rather than proportional fonts were common. The main reason/rationale people are saying they use double spacing is muscle memory (or they have always done it this way)

for a Dave Gorman "Found Poem" (if only MLIGI was still around).

Double spacing, on old monospace typewriters, made it easier to tell where one sentence ends and the next begins.

Today, with proportional fonts and justification, surely there is no need (and smarter programs might detect dot-space and leave a slightly larger gap?).

That said, given that it's going to be pretty much equal who double spaces and who single spaces, shouldn't this be a configurable option rather than an edict handed down from on high?

It is configurable. It just defaults to the side of Satan.

It kind of is configurable, just tell Word's grammar check to ignore it the first time you get the wiggly blue lines

> Double spacing, on old monospace typewriters, made it easier to tell where one sentence ends and the next begins.

More a case of when your only typeface is Courier, steps are needed to compensate,

I always liked TeX's approach: input is one space, but it detects end of sentences and puts in a slightly wider space (and then adjusts that for justification). These days with proportional typefaces a double space is too wide; this is helped by majuscule glyphs being bigger.

Two spaces were ALWAYS too much, in any font.

A full stop and a single space could be the end of an abbreviation, if you're the kind of person who still writes "Dr. Smith". Double space disambiguates that.

" Double space disambiguates that. "

Perhaps only for people who would otherwise believe that "Dr." is an entire sentence?

How would you have coped back before punctuation?

Today, with proportional fonts and justification, surely there is no need (and smarter programs might detect dot-space and leave a slightly larger gap?). Agreed. Any reasonable word processor would put additional kerning after the end of a sentence. Whether MS Word does so I can't tell.

Decent type-setting software (such as TeX) did it for you...and couldn't care less how many spaces (or tabs) you put there.

...but I do care about being told to use one space because that's someone else's preference.

Double spacing? Pah!

All words should stay at least 2 metres apart whether they have full stops or not.

Exactly. And once every day you shall step outside your front door and applaud the spell checker.

Not spelling. Grammar. Ask him ----->

Obviously all periods should be followed by a life size Osman GIF.

What the USA defines as correct, is not necessarily so.

Will the next update expect me the use the "serial comma"? I am not going to. I was taught that was wrong and see no need to change,

Before I got into IT, I learned to type. I did Secretarial Studies in evening classes and have a Scottish Higher and an RSA2. I was taught to tap the space bar twice after a full stop to try and help legibility. I know there were other reasons too but legibility still applies. It makes sentences more discrete so that people can see where one finishes and another starts. This can make it easier to understand. We have enough problems with people not reading blocks of text without actively discouraging them!

I was taught how to type in grade school, over 40 years ago. In later schooling I was the head assistant to the entire Secretarial Studies department, and the most advanced IT student of the entire school.

Double space. End of story. Microsoft can go fsck itself if it believes that proper form is do to otherwise.

RE: "Microsoft can go fsck itself if it believes ..."

Steady on old bean, we're only talking about an extra single space here; not the zombie apocalypse, or the ribbon interface.

For those of us who have been taught to do this correctly, this travesty is almost on a par.

My twopence is that it should be set as an obscure configurable option that people can tick if they were taught to type properly so we can get back to more important matters during the coronavirus apocalypse.

Geoffery W wrote: not the zombie apocalypse, or the ribbon interface.

The two are separate entities?

The two are separate entities?

The zombie apocalypse actually has upsides. Such as increased camaraderie and regular cardio workouts.

"It makes sentences more discrete so that people can see where one finishes and another starts. This can make it easier to understand"

Only if your program is too stoopid (Word is... mostly) to detect the end of the sentence or does not bother about putting in a slightly larger whitespace after a full stop. Two whitespaces are w-a-a-y too big in any font, they mess up the grey value of the final page, looks like somebody did a drive by with a shotgun.

(so yes: the spacing after the period, at the end of a sentence _only_, should be wider. Use a proper program to typeset the text.

"Use a prefe proper program to typeset the text"

And therein lies the problem: IMHO what both Microsoft and other single-space proponents are suggesting is to consciously modify their active typing technique to match what you can (perceive) your output device is doing.

Using a word processor that auto-adds end of sentence spaces? Single space key.

Using a monotype font? Double space.

Using email? Double space.

Using well programmed proportional font? Single space only if your program is actively acknowledging the auto extra end of sentence space.

This is madness. First figure out what default your program follows, then figure out how said program interprets the font of your choosing, then examine the results and modify as necessary.

Just double space the damn thing. That's been the standard since the typewriter keyboard was invented.

" What the USA defines as correct, is not necessarily so. "

Oh god, don't get me started on their asinine habit of putting sentence punctuation inside quotes...

...but legibility still applies... This can make it easier to understand.

Too bad this sentiment hasn't made it into the open source community yet. (Or most companies for that matter.)

And watch the rude comment every time you attempt this double-space horror.

I wasn't even aware this was a thing until recently. I was taught to always use 2 spaces after a full stop, and about 2 months ago I submitted a document to a fellow contractor for his feedback and he went off on a rant about single spaces being the way to go. He was the only one in the team, everyone else defaulted to 2 as well.

Surely though this should be an either/or option in Word? There's no way anyone is going to break the habit of years of bashing away on keyboards just because Microsoft say so.

It would be handy if Word would allow you to set the number of spaces of the full stop - but then enforce it automatically. I can see their logic in asking 'is this a mistake' but once you've told it, it can silent correct either way.

Of course, this is the old tabs vs spaces argument for millennials :)

---> obvs...

I very nearly failed a piss-easy basic Word course I was forced to do. Because I used minimal effort for my coursework - naturally. Asked to bang out a letter, I did exactly that because I could write the address after tabbing across each line to the right side of the screen quicker than I could take my hand off the keyboard to highlight it all and hit the right justify button. The legacy of learning on a massive old typewriter - back in the day. But then it got even sillier as I think I was marked down for doing the old skool Dear Sir / Yours Sincerely thing, rather than something more modern - as if that's anything to do with my competence in using word processors. Excel is all the word processor anyone needs anyway...

I did get a free copy of Lotus Smart Suite with my IBM 386, back in the early 90s. So I suppose Word can never be my least favourite word processor.

will word decide that upper case letters are not necessary, removing the upper case characters would free up ascii space for more emojis.

No, because now you're just being silly.

HOW WOULD WE YELL?

While it's not word's decision to make, let's try it.

do we really need capitalization to tell words apart? even proper nouns are clear enough that it's not needed. punctuation makes a clear separation in sentence parts, so we have no need of capitalization to start them. the only problem i can see is distinguishing acronyms that someone has made use the same letters as an actual word from that word would be tricky, but since most of those acronyms involve tortured word choice, that might actually be a benefit.

Yeah, it looks weird to me too. I'm not going to do it again, but maybe we could do without capitalization.

"One space good, two spaces bad?"

Yes, due to disk space. Of course I'm being ironical :)

But seriously, why 2 in the first place ?

Because the typefaces found on mechanical typewriters were typographic horrors.

Two spaces did help readability (as did double line spacing – which was required in many cases).

But with mechanical typewriters[1] being something for museums and hipsters, we should move on to better options.

Many people were taught two spaces, but that is because the teachers were taught that. This does not make it good.

[1] Outside parts of the Indian legal system IIRC.

My primary school teacher taught me two spaces, because we learnt on typewriters. The school did have one BBC Micro - but I'm not sure I ever got to use that, because it was actually one of the teacher's, he only let the kids he liked use it, and he didn't like me.

35 years later, it's an ubreakable habit. I remember how much effort it cost me to type on other peoples' PCs when I lived in Belgium, and they used the Devil's own AZERTY keyboards.

"But seriously, why 2 in the first place"

It increased legibility in a time of monospaced fonts and a lack of kerning.

Not that there's any age-ism in our field but ... a few years back I read a post (likely on LI, but I can't be sure; memory's the 2nd thing to go you know) about how to write a resume that doesn't divulge your age. Lose the double-spaces was number 1. Along with omitting a snail-mail address and of course the date of your University graduation.

Those of us who have been doing this for awhile will also leave off the side job we had in school overclocking Apple II's, and other ancient history. If done correctly they won't distinguish yours from someone whose career began when your reverse cron CV ends.

By the time you show up in that suit & tie you haven't worn since your niece's 2nd wedding they will hopefully be invested enough in your skills to look beyond your attire and the grey beard.

But how do you indicate that you have 30 years' experience in X without revealing that you're at least 40 years old?

Since so many recruiters demand 10 years experience in C++17, I assume you use your Microsoft tardis

The first being memory.

Now, where's my coat...?