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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   Printer-friendly
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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  • (Score: 2) by noneof_theabove on Tuesday April 28 2020, @11:49PM

    by noneof_theabove (6189) on Tuesday April 28 2020, @11:49PM (#988050)

    well tell me how to parse this sentence so that it goes from one line to 2.

    I called Mr. Jones to tell him I would be late. He said ok.

    parsing for ". " [one space] results in:
    I called Mr.
    Jones to tell him I would be late.
    He said ok.

    I did tons of parsing from phone company data back in my last job.
    I was never the same twice in a row.
    And never ask the phone company to fix 2 things as they will probably screw up 3.

    And what is it with HTML.
    &npsp;&nbps;
    Talk about bit bloat 12 characters verses 2.

    Welcome to the dumbing down of the public.

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