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.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday May 11 2018, @04:25PM
See? Function overloading is bad! English uses the same symbol for ending a sentence and (in America) for separating the fractional part from the whole part of a decimal number, and for abbreviations and ellipses.
ASCII mostly copied typewriters, which overloaded symbols everywhere possible. Old mechanical typewriters are worse than ASCII. Often did not have a '1' key. You were supposed to use small 'l' for a '1'. Seems Unicode has plenty of room for distinctive dots, but a quick look didn't turn up much.