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from the and-then-they-discovered- dept.
One space good, two spaces bad? (This story appears near the end of the article; scroll down to see it.)
Finally, Microsoft found time to weigh in on the age-old debate of just how many spaces belong after a full stop (or "period"). Thanks to an update, Word will apparently treat two spaces as a typo and festoon a double-spaced document with red, squiggly lines unless told to ignore the rule.
A debate for the ages finally settled. Where do you stand? ⚔️ https://twitter.com/tomwarren/status/1253655739379470338
— Microsoft 365 (@Microsoft365) April 24, 2020
Not everyone is impressed with change; this hack, for example, has fond memories of bashing away on the keys of a typewriter back in the day and slapping the spacebar twice between sentences [...]. It has proven a hard habit to break. Others, such as Jason Howard, senior project manager on the Windows Insider Team, called for a poll on the matter.
@Microsoft365 has thrown down the gauntlet. Apparently #MicrosoftWord will now flag double-spacing between sentences as an error.
Which side will you pick? Choose wisely...
— Jason Howard (@NorthFaceHiker) April 24, 2020
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:10PM (45 children)
Perhaps you meant English teachers. I don't think IT cars about how many spaces you use.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:37PM (7 children)
Can anybody explain this using a care analogy?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:42PM (3 children)
Stay 6 ft apart instead of 12 ft. My God 12 ft!?!
(Score: 5, Funny) by RS3 on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:50PM
That's what she said.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @12:30AM (1 child)
No!! Microsoft is now saying 3ft is right not 6ft standard.
Microsoft is just WRONG
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday April 29 2020, @01:12AM
Yep... that's what he said.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday April 28 2020, @11:53PM (1 child)
OK: I couldn't possibly care less about whatever microsoft feels like saying.
I can even think of a car analogy: I'm not going to waste time listening to microsoft's opinion on whether or not double declutching is necessary with an unsynchronised gearbox.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @01:46AM
It is, but they call them synchronized gearboxes instead.
(Score: 3, Touché) by datapharmer on Wednesday April 29 2020, @02:25AM
In a world of things like python we can safely say that IT folk are concerned with whitespace and the choice of delimiters. Whether we want to be or not.
(Score: 5, Funny) by TapeApe on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:09PM (3 children)
English teachers will explain patiently that it's two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence, or after a colon. Then they'll mention that it's just one space after a comma or a semicolon.
IT teachers will froth at the mouth and argue over whether to use 5 spaces, 8 spaces, or hit the [TAB] button when indenting your code for readability.
Each type of teacher thinks the other is slightly ridiculous, and both look down at the auto mechanics teacher who keeps them mobile.
...
It's a funny old world when you look at it.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 28 2020, @04:37PM (2 children)
You left out Sports / PE teachers.
It's the state law that STEM and IT students attend one hour of PE per day and get beat up by jocks.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:58PM
>> It's the state law that STEM and IT students attend one hour of PE per day and get beat up by jocks.
And it's karma that the jocks spend the rest of their lives being monitored and manipulated by their IT overlords.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:06PM
The junior high school I went to, many moons ago, was very old and only had a small gym with a single locker room. So the girls got to use the gym in the junior high building, and the boys had to go across the large parking lot to the high school to have gym. With the high school boys.
Imagine, if you will, being a seventh grader nerd for whom puberty was merely a rumor, having to take gym class with high schoolers. Especially the seniors, when for senior year gym wasn't mandatory so all the seniors were there voluntarily. Not just the sports, which was bad enough, but having to shower with everyone. It was not good. During the first week, in the shower the oldest boys started to (ahem) hassle us junior highers, until the coach stuck his head into the shower and stopped it. The rest of the year, and following ones, after class the coach stood where he could swivel his head and keep an eye on what was going on in the shower and in the rest of the locker room. We might have been the only boys ever who were glad the coach was watching us take showers.
That was over forty years ago, and I still occasionally have a bad dream about being in that locker room again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:22PM (31 children)
Our Typing Teacher told us to use two spaces. We used coal-fired steam powered typewriters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:26PM (13 children)
Young whippersnappers. We had to do word processing in our head.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @04:44PM (11 children)
Manual word processing? Pfft. We had to be content with wet clay.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:21PM (10 children)
You had wet clay? We had to use chisels to do the editing.
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 28 2020, @06:38PM (9 children)
Chisels? Luxury. We had to write by selectively eroding the stone with water!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:22PM (8 children)
What luxuries! All we had in our cave was charcoal and poo!
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @08:53PM (7 children)
You had a cave? My god, we were forced to save every space for Microsoft, they only had room for 640.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:18PM (6 children)
You were lucky. We were chained to the linotype machines from birth, and had to scrape the droppings of hot lead from the type machines to use for food. They used our very blood for heat to melt the lead in the first place. With each line of type formed we had to catch the lava hot hunks of lead with our teeth, and trot quickly over to the page forms to drop each line into the press for each page of the morning paper. During our five-minutes-per-day break, our only solace was capturing the reflection of the flames, from the criminals being burned at the stake outside for the crime of smudging a sheet of newsprint, in the shiny bits of lead covering our rotting nubs of teeth.
But we were happy.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:43PM (1 child)
So you had heating then? Luxury!
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday April 29 2020, @10:23PM
You knew what heating was? And the only ink we had was our blood, just like Tom Hanks in Castaway.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday April 28 2020, @11:58PM (3 children)
Yeah, that's right, but just try telling todays kids...
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @04:00AM (2 children)
Booooo! I should mod you down for breaking the lovely start of a USENET-style cascade.
For the young'uns, page down here to see some small ones,
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.cascade/4qe6SXf_8iQ [google.com]
They looked better on a text screen, not a web page.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday April 29 2020, @05:19AM (1 child)
I'll see your Google and raise The Four Yorkshiremen [youtube.com] (now sadly down to one) from "At Last the 1948 Show"
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @02:50PM
Would you like a parrot with that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:55PM
Damn right! To center a line you had to count the characters, divide by two and backspace from the center of the page, and we didn't complain!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 28 2020, @04:40PM (1 child)
In 1977 I got to use a cool IBM Selectric in typing class. It was bright red.
I took typing for one and only one purpose: to be good at typing on a computer keyboard, which I knew I would be doing for the rest of my life.
Two years later in college, I did far less hand writing and more typing. After starting in the "real world" no more hand writing again ever. Except to sign my name, and write checks. Even the check writing eventually went away. Now, at most I hand scrawl post-it notes. But I sure can type.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday April 29 2020, @10:26PM
In something like 1981 my typing class had three Selectric II's (had its own correction ribbon which made it different from the original Selectric) and we had 27 manual typewriters. We also had a computer room with 27 PETs and 3 TRS-80 M. III's. But my Dad owned a Selectric II he bought for his business, and they bought me a Model III of my very own with cassette but it had 16K. (Which was @#$*()%@*)% expensive for our family's budget. I've never forgotten it).
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DannyB on Tuesday April 28 2020, @04:42PM (14 children)
It is interesting how QUERTY has stuck to this day. There are other keyboard layouts. But four and a half decades since I started using computes, everything is still QUERTY. Well into the 21st century.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @04:54PM (11 children)
How do you typo "QWERTY"? The letters are literally lined up for you at the top of the keyboard!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:04PM (10 children)
I think by reflex. Not sure why. But I didn't even realize it. It didn't "look" wrong. In fact QWERTY is awkward to type, and looks strange.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by gtomorrow on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:14PM (6 children)
DANNYB!!!
And this is after you were almost bragging what a typing whiz you are...?! Anybody can type 120 typos a minute. I can type 280 bits of nonsense a minute!
All your credibility has gone swiftly down the drain. 🤣
(Score: 4, Touché) by DannyB on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:29PM (5 children)
I'm not bragging about being especially fast. But I do fairly rapidly type. And backspace sometimes. :-) But I've been doing it for decades. The typing teacher made sure nobody got started with any bad habits.
I am thinking about how I repeated that mistake twice and didn't catch it. I think Q is uncommonly used at the start of a word. And QU is a common digram.
I tried to think of a word starting with Q not followed by U. I couldn't think of any.
So I just had a peek at /usr/dict/words
Scrolling down to the Q's. It starts like . . .
pyrotechnic
pyrotechnics
pyrotechnics's
python
python's
pythons
pyx
pyx's
pyxes
q
qua
quack
quack's
quacked
quackery
And ends with . . .
quoted
quotes
quoth
quotidian
quotient
quotient's
quotients
quoting
r
rabbi
rabbi's
rabbinate
rabbinate's
rabbinical
rabbis
rabbit
rabbit's
rabbited
Other than the single letter Q, every word in /usr/dict/words, starting with Q is followed by U. So it must be reflex to type it. Which it was. I had no conscious awareness of it. Even though I knew what I intended to type.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:49PM (2 children)
Some Arab place names do, like Qatar, if you need something to practise on.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 28 2020, @06:23PM (1 child)
I have probably typed Qatar even less than any other word beginning with Q. And I noticed that my fingers slowed down compared to other words in these sentences.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @08:59PM
I managed to win at Scrabble once by claiming QWERTY was a word. With a little virtual arm twisting the other players accepted it (but pretty sure it's not in the Scrabble dictionary). It was on at least a double square, so lots of points!
(Score: 2) by gtomorrow on Tuesday April 28 2020, @06:49PM
DannyB, I love you! ❤️ Your wit and love for stupid puns are always welcome reads for me here.
But...just 'fess up already! You fucked up. Twice! It's QWERTY. It
should beis ingrained in our collective brain. You're just making it worse for yourself with yr who-cares list from...like I said, who cares?!Ehhh...I love you anyway! ❤️
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:49PM
For those who like to cheat at Scrabble, here are all of the words that use Q but not U [word.tips]
(Score: 3, Touché) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Wednesday April 29 2020, @12:02AM (2 children)
Can't see how, I very rarely mistype my passwords...
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 29 2020, @02:39PM (1 child)
I find that the more letters I have to type on the same hand, the slower it goes. Even as I rapid fire what you are reading right now, I notice that moving back and forth between hands seems to speed things up. But I'm not sure. But I notice that in this very test there are significant runs of letters on the same hand, alternating between hands. Just look at the word 'between' for example.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @02:52PM
Re-inventing Dvorak -- vowels on one side, common consonants on the other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:16PM (1 child)
The position of the letters doesn't really matter that much.
For a programmer, what can matter over the course of a day is all those punctuation symbols and control key combos we have to type.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday April 29 2020, @02:42PM
Like most things that humans can adapt to, you get used to them.
I remember having to break the := (colon-equals) assignment operator from Pascal. And I typed words like BEGIN and END so rapidly and frequently that I'll always be able to do it.
Then I realized C was developed by a bunch of hunt-and-peck savages. And C++ continued that awfulness. And Java. But at least in Java you get variable and identifier names that use up at least half of a 120 character line. So there.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Tuesday April 28 2020, @04:08PM
Not many IT teachers cares, but the guy who came up with TEX is probably rolling in his grave (oh still alive? sorry)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:13PM (7 children)
We never tried to force people to use double spaces, why do have to mess with us?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:58PM (6 children)
I'm going to start using 3 motherfucking spaces . Yeah bitch get used to it .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:00PM (3 children)
SOYLENT ATE MY SPACES!!1!1111
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday April 28 2020, @04:43PM (1 child)
It also ate your caps lock key.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 29 2020, @01:06PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @01:53AM
space weed in space !
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:53PM (1 child)
Old printers (pre-1900) did just that. Big spaces anyway.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday April 28 2020, @09:39PM
A pre-1900 printer would look something like this. [blogspot.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by EJ on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:34PM (29 children)
Two spaces after a period is not an error. It is an indicator that the sentence is over. I am so sick of Microsoft's software trying to tell me what it thinks I mean to do.
Microsoft Word is the typesetter. When I put in two spaces, the stupid software should determine that I mean for that to be the end of the sentence, then figure out how much space to allocate to those two characters.
I suppose my Linux machine should flag all instances of \r\n from Windows as an error too.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:44PM (1 child)
It looks like you're trying to post a rant. Would you like help with that? AUTO ALL CAPS? Replace "!" with "1"? Click here to disable help (for a little while anyway).
(Score: 4, Funny) by Bot on Tuesday April 28 2020, @04:21PM
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:44PM (6 children)
Since you mention stupid software, I've been sending comments with double spaces after a period to this webapp for 20 years now. Never did a developer on any site insert a non-breaking space into the rendered html. I DEMAND A REFUND FROM THESE FASCIST BASTARDS!
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:54PM (1 child)
Your
refund
check
will
arrive
in
60
days.
(Score: 3, Touché) by noneof_theabove on Tuesday April 28 2020, @04:27PM
Do it in pearl the right way - no spaces or new lines just run it together
yourrefundcheckwillarrivein60days
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:57PM (3 children)
And yet, you only single-spaced this comment....really ingrained habit you have there..
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:55PM (2 children)
HTML renders all white space as single-space. HTML did it years ahead of Microsoft.
(Score: 1) by DECbot on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:29PM
If they really cared, they would use the to make the HTML respect the damned whitespace. <--Like this!
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:07PM
Fascinating.
I guess I never noticed because as an adult I have always used a single space.
I do vaguely recall a high school typing class that stressed two spaces in business correspondence. And a college medical transcription course that pushed single spacing to speed up transcription on the old Selectric ball typewriters, one less keystroke per sentence. I sucked at that course, as typing words like laperohysterosalpingo-oophorectomy always slowed me down considerably. I passed, but barely.
I kept to single spacing after that.
The more you know (the more you can fuck things up!!)
(;
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 5, Touché) by epitaxial on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:27PM (7 children)
If two spaces indicate the sentence is over then what the fuck is the period for?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Bot on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:44PM (2 children)
All I know is: no fuck during period.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pvanhoof on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:36PM
Don't panic, and use a towel
(Score: 4, Touché) by epitaxial on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:14PM
Nothing wrong with stirring the paint once in a while.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by darkfeline on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:48PM (1 child)
For titles like Mr. and Ms. (I typed two spaces there but HTML/SN removed them. Now you can't tell if this parenthetical clause is part of the previous sentence or not.) There are no applications that automatically typeset the right amount of space after sentence terminating periods vs other periods without some kind of manual indicator (either double spaces or backslashes for LaTeX).
People claiming that applications do so is a farce.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Informative) by jb on Wednesday April 29 2020, @07:34AM
But your two examples don't take a full stop because they aren't abbreviations, they're contractions, "Mr" is short for "Mister" and "Ms" is short for "Miss or Mrs". Same deal with "Dr", "Sgt", &c.. In each case, the final letter of the short form is also the final letter of the long form, so a full stop should not be used (unless you want to use the archaic form where all bar the first letter of the short form is written as a superscript, with a single full stop written directly under the centre of the superscripted letters).
If you want a real example of where a title is an abbreviation and therefore takes a full stop, perhaps try something along the lines of "Prof.", "Const." or "Rt. Hon.".
(Score: 2) by https on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:52PM
"Period" has multiple uses, most notably abbreviations. Period space, abbreviation. Period space space, end of sentence. Oddly, sometime in my lifetime acronyms stopped getting periods after each letter, but even before that they kept the second space if at the sentence. I blame S.P.E.C.T.R.E.
There are exactly zero methods for writing down arbitrary ideas that can't be glitched in some weird way if you wait long enough or try hard enough. Classic demonstration is this perfectly correct sentence:
I blame Godel. And S.P.E.C.T.R.E.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @05:23PM
The period is an overloaded operator.
Company Inc. is an accepted thing.
The two spaces indicate the sentence is really over and you are not abbreviating anything. English is weird. Do not try to put to much thought into trying to make it sane. It is one part the history of itself, one part the accent of the user, one part poor/proper spelling, and one part crazy rules that try to help provide intent.
Don't fret too much about it. That is the job of Jr. High english teachers. :)
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday April 28 2020, @04:59PM
It's all part of the slow but sure machines taking over, through MS. They just creep in every little nook and cranny they can. They'll eat away at Linux. They've started. MBA-types don't and won't know any better- they'll believe Linux is an MS API. You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gtomorrow on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:25PM (4 children)
I used to do real typesetting for a living, from setting lead type in galleys, to the Compugraphic MCS PowerView, to the Mac...so I'm God 🤣.
Two spaces is an error, I don't care what they told you in typing class. Everybody get this tattooed on your forearm.
And Microsoft Word isn't a typesetter. If anything, it's (and its brethren) like an electric typewriter which, among other things, allows you to put (as some smart-ass here already posted) three spaces if you so desire. But don't ever think it's correct.
Consolation Prize: I too am sick of Microsoft trying to tell me what to do and have been for many years now.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Tuesday April 28 2020, @08:06PM (1 child)
My mother was a typesetter. She taught me two spaces when I was six.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Touché) by gtomorrow on Tuesday April 28 2020, @08:39PM
We all love our mothers. They are our first "points of reference". Even for Ted Bundy. Or Donald Trump. Or Kim Jong Un. Or Dick Cheney...ok, maybe not Cheney (an influence works one of two ways).
But you get my point...I hope.
(Score: 2) by corey on Tuesday April 28 2020, @11:17PM (1 child)
I came here to say this. Looks like everyone else feels the same. Out of my way, Microsoft, just let me type what I want.
I usually have autocorrect turned off anyway.
This made me remember a paper I read over 10 years ago about LaTeX. The crux of it came down to, you should not be interested or distracted by formatting and appearance when writing something. That's what LaTeX provides. You produce the text, in pure text format, and then worry about formatting it later. I guess these days, everything is about appearance and "brand". Anyway, I tried to dig up the paper but I can't find it. This looked similar though:
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/latex.html [dedoimedo.com]
He did some tests, for example writing maths functions, and it was faster in LaTeX.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday April 29 2020, @12:32AM
Why would you type with autocorrect turned off? That's just asking tpysos.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:26PM (5 children)
Sorry to say, as much as I despise MS, but they're right here.
No, two spaces is an error. The period indicates the sentence is complete. The only reason anyone ever used two spaces was because, in the Old Days, typewriters were monospaced, so two spaces approximated the extra space (about 1.5 spaces) that is found at the end of a sentence in a properly typeset document printed with proportional fonts. You can see this if you go look at old books. Typewriters can't be used for actual typesetting, or use proportional fonts, so they made-do with two spaces.
These days, that's all obsolete. Any decent word processor uses proportional fonts, and can automatically put that extra space after a period. Most software these days simply ignores the extra space that so many people use. It's the same if you use a markup language like LaTeX or MarkDown: the extra space character is ignored.
Microsoft Word is the typesetter. When I put in two spaces, the stupid software should determine that I mean for that to be the end of the sentence, then figure out how much space to allocate to those two characters.
This is correct, and what they've been doing, but I guess they've decided to finally end the thoroughly-obsolete two-space convention by flagging it as an error instead of silently ignoring it as they have been. But there hasn't been a good reason to use 2 spaces in at least a couple decades now, and it's time to stop teaching people to do it, just like we no longer teach people to dial "1" before a "long distance" number.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @09:09PM (2 children)
> just like we no longer teach people to dial "1" before a "long distance" number.
OT, but I'm still in an area where we do have to dial "1" to get outside our area code. Over the years this has been very perplexing to international visitors to the USA--since numbers are often written without the "1".
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday April 30 2020, @12:57AM (1 child)
Do you still have a landline? AFAIK, landlines are still like this. "We" don't teach people to dial "1" any more because almost no one has landlines any more, and cellphones don't use the "1" (unless you're dialing a US number from outside the states, in which case you need to dial "+1", not just "1"). I don't know anyone who has a landline any more. Even my elderly mother who lives in a small town doesn't have a landline.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 30 2020, @03:37AM
Yes, land line, still copper, works during power outages (we have big snow and ice storms...). But Verizon is stringing fiber in the neighborhood this month and soon we will have to convert to something else--FiOS or cable phone.
Cell phone doesn't work well here, we're between towers or something. Business calls are frequent for me and I don't have time for "Can you hear me now?" crap from expensive cell phone toys.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 29 2020, @03:15AM
I'd mod you up if I was at home. You're the only person who got it right. So much ignorance in these comments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday April 29 2020, @07:25AM
Anything done intentionally is not an error.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Touché) by Kitsune008 on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:42PM (11 children)
As a Linux user, I could not care less about any Microsoft decree, or what is going on with MS Word.
Besides, who made them the arbiter of punctuation?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:47PM
Besides, who made you butthurt about spaces? Somebody must have done bad things to you, man.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:23PM
Oh wow your butt really is hurt. I'm so sorry for ridiculing you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Tuesday April 28 2020, @05:06PM (5 children)
Look how much development effort (human-hours) is spent reverse-engineering MS file formats, filesystem, networking, etc., formats, to make Linux applications and lower-level software conform to MS non-standards. We dream of a different world, but MS dominance is the reality.
(Score: 2) by VacuumTube on Tuesday April 28 2020, @06:08PM (4 children)
They've beaten us into submission. I'll put up with anything short of that miserable paperclip.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday April 28 2020, @06:47PM (3 children)
They certainly have won. I think the double-space thing is them testing the waters. Just checking to see how numbed over we are. My fear is that it's pretty bad at this point...
I actually don't know the "paperclip" reference. Somehow I escaped it I guess. The little dog was annoying. That, and other things irritated me because why can't they put the development into better software? No, gotta attract customers through little gimmicks. I could rant on and on, but then I'd be giving what's left of my soul to the devil... :-|
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @09:18PM (1 child)
Clippy was the worst, don't even try to learn more about it.
It will be awhile before MS is enforcing the single space thing on me...still using Word97 which doesn't phone home. I've managed to get Office97 running in Win7. Looking forward to the day (retirement) when I can switch to Linux, where I hear that Wine supports old Office nicely. Office97 is blazing fast on recent hardware! (it was a real dog when I first had to use it).
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday April 29 2020, @01:31AM
I hate to ruin a perfectly good discussion filled with fun speculation, MS hatred, rants, and ribald humor (oops), but in fact you can tell Word to accept the double space after a period. In other words, the story is much ado about nothing. MS just enjoy toying with us, because they can.
Well, I mostly use WordPerfect 12 and love it. Can't pry it out of my hands.
For messy docx stuff, you probably know you can get a plugin that will let you open them. Man do I hate stuff like ".docx".
About 8 years ago I was pretty much forced (if I wanted the work and pay) to do some projects in Word 2007. It involved text and images. Well, it was near impossible to get the text to wrap the way you wanted it to. Talk about negotiating with a computer. Ugh. Coaxing, pleading, cursing. Then when you thought you had it, you scroll to another page, come back, and of course Word has fixed everything for you. And by "fixed" of course I mean broken. More ugh.
Anyway, I use LibreOffice for .docx when I have to- mostly to convert to something usable, like .wpd. LibreOffice is pretty cool stuff. Been pretty reliable, functional, etc. Good enough for me. But WP12 is very fast, I can see hidden problematic codes, it'll export to .pdf, etc., and it was FREE with Dell computers that I have.
I have MS Office Pro 2007 but have never installed it. Literally trash-picked it. I'll head off the comment: yes, it was where it belongs. I thought I had Office 2012 too, but now I'm not so sure (but I'm sure I don't care.)
(Score: 2) by VacuumTube on Wednesday April 29 2020, @06:04PM
I think the paperclip aka "clippy" preceded the dog, but I may be wrong. Most probably found the two about equally annoying, but the clip became my blood enemy.
https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PnCzeDLvefGL_DYVk4TlxTLhNkQ=/0x0:1062x705/1200x800/filters:focal(447x269:615x437)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/63280536/clippy.0.jpg [vox-cdn.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @06:00PM (2 children)
>> As a Linux user, I could not care less about any Microsoft decree, or what is going on with MS Word.
You should, it's a preview of what Poettering is going to add to the next version of systemd.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday April 28 2020, @06:50PM (1 child)
Oh that's a horrifying thought I hadn't thought about: will MS dominate, or will Poettering? Or much much worse, will they collaborate? IBM and MS reunited by Poettering and systemd? Gosh.... (trundles off to look into other careers...)
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:23PM
I hate to horrify you, but MS already won.
As you yourself stated:
As MS hasn't put the effort into the opposite, they have already 'won.' As they have become the de-facto standard since everyone is conforming to their standard, officially recognized or not.
I suggest a nice strong drink right about now...sorry to ruin your day RS3.
Do try and have a nice day....
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:56PM (2 children)
TFA doesn't really say, but was this done in some "update" they just pushed out? Since they are talking about that cloudy subscription 365 shit, I'm guessing that is the case?
Insert rant about not changing major features in minor updates here.
Do they even still sell a NORMAL desktop version of Microsoft Office? (I thought I read they did, but could not find it the last time I looked) Does that suffer from this same bullshit?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:01PM
From the summary which quotes the article:
So TFA really does say.
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Wednesday April 29 2020, @12:06AM
Ok, to partially answer my own question (what the hell do I know, I'm running Office 97 :P ) the standalone version is "Microsoft Office 2019". https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/get-started-with-office-2019 [microsoft.com]
I just love the way they write this shit: "For customers who aren’t ready for the cloud", how about customers who don't fucking want any retarded cloud crap? Oh, right, fuck them.
And one of the "features" they say Office 2019 does NOT have is "Automatic new feature updates". So is Office 2019 immune from this update?
It sounds like it is time to ditch the cloud.
(Score: 4, Informative) by EvilSS on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:12PM (14 children)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:26PM (2 children)
OK you seem to know your shit. So can you explain what Normal.dot is and why it keeps wanting to be saved or loaded?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday April 28 2020, @04:10PM
normaldotdot? doesn't look normal at all. AT ALL.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Informative) by EvilSS on Tuesday April 28 2020, @06:09PM
(Score: 4, Informative) by khallow on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:41PM (10 children)
That was sarcasm, right? That was always one of the most annoying things about chipper Microsoft boosters. "Sure! Microsoft can be configured to work any way you want, including the right way! You just... need... to find it... somewhere... I think it's here... hmmm..."
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:55PM
On Linux it's much easier. First download the source code...
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday April 28 2020, @06:06PM (8 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:03PM (7 children)
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Wednesday April 29 2020, @01:41PM (6 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 29 2020, @02:21PM (5 children)
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Wednesday April 29 2020, @03:28PM (4 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 29 2020, @03:47PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Wednesday April 29 2020, @04:31PM
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 29 2020, @04:44PM (1 child)
Speaking of google, MS Office is for boomers, all the kids only use google docs now a days.
My kids (K12) schools do everything in Google docs because its free and frankly faster and easier to use the MSWord.
The non-profit I volunteered at used google, everyone uses google, except international megacorporations, most of which have only just completed their Windows 7 desktop rollout.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Wednesday April 29 2020, @07:21PM