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Two Spaces After Period Are Better Than One, Except Maybe They Aren't, Study Finds

posted by Fnord666 on Friday May 11 2018, @12:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the BBC-thinks-it's-a-paragraph-break-after-a-period dept.

MrPlow writes:

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.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/two-spaces-after-period-are-better-than-one-except-maybe-they-arent-study-finds/

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @04:46PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @04:46PM (#678465)

    Try to explain that to a python programmer.

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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday May 11 2018, @08:33PM (1 child)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Friday May 11 2018, @08:33PM (#678559) Journal

    Or any programmer of a modern language. If you want a language that ignores space characters outside character/string constants, you need to write FORTRAN. Where instead of

    DO I = 1, 10

    you can write

    DOI = 1,10

    ad instead of

    DOI = 1.10

    you can write

    DO I = 1. 10

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday May 14 2018, @03:51PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday May 14 2018, @03:51PM (#679605) Journal

      C      EXAMPLE OF NOT HAVING KEY WURDS.
             IF IF = THEN THEN THEN = ELSE ELSE ELSE = IF

      --
      The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.