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Microsoft Word Decrees All High-School IT Teachers Were Wrong: Double Spaces Now Flagged as Typos

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday April 28 2020, @01:58PM   
from the and-then-they-discovered-  dept.

martyb writes:

Microsoft decrees that all high-school IT teachers were wrong: Double spaces now flagged as typos in Word:

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

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Original Submission

• Another reason to switch to Libreoffice? Another reason to switch to Libreoffice? (Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:56PM (2 children)

  by SomeGuy (5632) on Tuesday April 28 2020, @02:56PM (#987836)

  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?

  Starting Score:	1		point
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• Re:Another reason to switch to Libreoffice? (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:01PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 28 2020, @03:01PM (#987840)

  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?

  From the summary which quotes the article:

  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.

  So TFA really does say.

  Parent

• Re:Another reason to switch to Libreoffice? (Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Wednesday April 29 2020, @12:06AM

  by SomeGuy (5632) on Wednesday April 29 2020, @12:06AM (#988056)

  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.

  Parent