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

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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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by bloodnok on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:06PM (7 children)

    by bloodnok (2578) on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:06PM (#987961)

    As someone above pointed out: from a typesetting point of view, 2 spaces after a period is an error.

    But from the point of view of reading non-typeset text, 2 spaces after a period makes the text easier to scan. If you are typing on a typewriter you are not typesetting. If you are writing comments in code, you are not typesetting. If you're using a word processor, then you *are* typesetting, though perhaps not very well.

    There is a common misconception that word processors are writing tools. They are not. They are typesetting tools (however crap they may be). A writing tool encourages you to write. A typesetting tool encourages you to choose fonts and styles and other stuff.

    So, if you are writing something that is to be typeset, then let the typesetter sort out the spacing for you. But if not, or if the input to your typesetting tool (docbook, html, markdown, etc) is something that others will have to read in its raw form, then why not make the sentences stand apart from each other. Two spaces after a period is not a rule; it is a courtesy to the reader.

    I began my career in software development writing documentation in troff. We mandated 2 spaces after a period. It had no affect on the rendered output, but made it much easier for others to read and review. The switch to Word was a horrible experience. Suddenly all of our documents became subtly different from each other. The beautiful, standardised, typesetting we had become used to slowly evaporated as templates became updated, and writers began to think that they knew how the typesetting should be done. I have an aversion to word processors to this very day.

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  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:51PM (6 children)

    by darkfeline (1030) on Tuesday April 28 2020, @07:51PM (#987978) Homepage

    What characters are stored in the file is completely unrelated to what gets rendered/typeset. The purpose of two space characters after a period is to indicate that it is a sentence terminating period. The typesetter should then insert the correct width of space, taking into account many other variables, into the final typeset document.

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    • (Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:20PM (5 children)

      by crafoo (6639) on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:20PM (#988028)

      Also, two spaces looks better in every font I've seen. I like it. It looks better. I've started using one space though because from about the millennials onward it became the norm.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Pslytely Psycho on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:50PM (4 children)

        by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Tuesday April 28 2020, @10:50PM (#988041)

        In some cases it was always the norm.

        I had a medical machine transcription course back in the late 70's that stressed single spaces to conserve keystrokes (called key presses IIRC) on the old IBM Selectrics. Medical terminology was always a bitch to type anyway. Especially listening through shitty headphones to a low quality miniature transcription tape of a doctor mangling the pronunciations, or with a heavy accent.

        Before the Millennials were even born.

        Granted, business classes stressed the double space for clarity and appearance, and I don't know about typesetters, news or technical writers as I had no training there, but two spaces was never universal.

        --
        Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
        • (Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday April 29 2020, @12:33PM (1 child)

          by crafoo (6639) on Wednesday April 29 2020, @12:33PM (#988160)

          I'm not sure if you realized it, but that's a classic moving the goalposts argument.

          • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Wednesday April 29 2020, @07:58PM

            by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Wednesday April 29 2020, @07:58PM (#988313)

            No attempt to move the goalposts at all.

            Not sure how stating that not all fields used the same rule is moving the goalpost. Within the comments are mentions from people familiar with typesetting stating that one traditionally used two spaces and another one. There always seems to be a variance within fields regarding the usage or definition of formal rules.

            Outside of business correspondence, I personally never heard of this rule to begin with. It seems more a matter of formality than a hard and fast rule. And if there is a hard and fast rule, it seems likely to be more in line with the oxford comma, old and outdated.

            Just an opinion. Which like all opinions, is basically meaningless in the wider scope of life, especially regarding grammar and writing styles, as it doesn't have an effect on comprehension.

            Have a good week.

            --
            Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
        • (Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Wednesday April 29 2020, @01:22PM (1 child)

          by Oakenshield (4900) on Wednesday April 29 2020, @01:22PM (#988173)

          I haven't real a dead tree newspaper for some time now, but my last recollection was that they were typeset in full justification; not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison to a standard Word document. I can recall reading lines in newsprint with a handful of words with ridiculous spacing to make that nice even column. Some books and magazines do the same.

          • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Wednesday April 29 2020, @08:01PM

            by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Wednesday April 29 2020, @08:01PM (#988315)

            So, more of a Golden Delicious to a Red Delicious comparison?

            I'm sorry, I've drank too much and am calling an Uber now.....(:

            --
            Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.