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posted by
Fnord666
on Friday May 11 2018, @12:26PM
from the BBC-thinks-it's-a-paragraph-break-after-a-period dept.
from the BBC-thinks-it's-a-paragraph-break-after-a-period dept.
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
In what may be one of the most controversial studies of the year, researchers at Skidmore College—clearly triggered by a change in the American Psychological Association (APA) style book—sought to quantify the benefits of two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence. After conducting an eye-tracking experiment with 60 Skidmore students, Rebecca L. Johnson, Becky Bui, and Lindsay L. Schmitt found that two spaces at the end of a period slightly improved the processing of text during reading. The research was trumpeted by some press outlets as a vindication of two-spacers' superiority.
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Two Spaces After Period Are Better Than One, Except Maybe They Aren't, Study Finds
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In Tulsa, Oklahoma, it is against the law to open a soda bottle without
the supervision of a licensed engineer.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday May 11 2018, @03:55PM (2 children)
As someone (DannyB?) pointed out above, touch-type for long enough and you don't think. You just type. Sentence separators for me are just automatic - I hit two spaces when I separate sentences. The real question to me is: What is the harm with two spaces? (And did they even touch colons? Probably not as most people believe touching a colon is gross.)
But without going back to the study itself TFA has one of the best lines I've ever read as its conclusion. Quoting the study authors,
Very refreshing from the, "this needs more study!" ubiquitous plea.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Friday May 11 2018, @04:39PM
Agree. It would be more productive to argue about spaces vs tabs.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @09:24PM
"The real question to me is: What is the harm with two spaces?"
I live and work in Japan, and Japanese text doesn't uses spaces at all. Every now and then a colleague will ask me to check their English, and in their Word document there will be a random mix of zero(!), one, or two spaces after sentences. Therefore, I mostly see two spaces used not as a rule, but as a mistake - as in, most sentences will have one space after them, and sometimes a typing mistake or editing will leave in an extra space, or lose the spaces altogether. They just don't notice, so when I move the cursor and delete extra spaces they're always amazed I even saw that.
I'd bet that there are a lot of non-techie people in the west with the same problem of inconsistency, and it's very noticeable in WYSIWYG editors. Really, HTML and LaTeX ignoring extraneous whitespace is a blessing.