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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: 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. :)