9 ms·

I am an unapologetic curmudgeon who uses two spaces. Or rather, my right thumb does. I learned to type on an IBM Selectric, I use mostly mono-spaced fonts, an

by KC8ZKF 9y ago

I am an unapologetic curmudgeon who uses two spaces. Or rather, my right thumb does. I learned to type on an IBM Selectric, I use mostly mono-spaced fonts, and two spaces after a full stop makes perfect sense. I went thirty years between learning it and thinking about it, and then some point-and-drool twee bloggers made it unfashionable.

paulcole 9y ago
> then some point-and-drool twee bloggers made it unfashionable. Outside of newspapers, it was always unfashionable. I mean just look at a book, magazine, or even this site.
- KC8ZKF 9y ago
  Hacker News eats the second space. Which is fine. I'm not saying that typesetters should show two spaces between sentences, rather the edict against typing two spaces between sentences is wrong. Two spaces even has a (small) amount of semantic information. i.e. "This is a full stop and not part of an acronym or radix point, etc."
  - ScottBurson 9y ago
    It's not Hacker News eating the space; it's actually how the browser renders text. That said, I agree. What I type into the computer is not typesetting commands; it's input to the renderer, whose job is to understand what I'm telling it and lay it out appropriately. So, putting one space after a period indicates an abbreviation rather than the end of a sentence; the renderer may or may not choose to lay these out differently, but at least it has the option.
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      HN could if it wanted to insert an  <space> following a full stop. It doesn't. One reason being Mr. Twee I-don't-use-two-spaces-after-a-full-stop, that it's awfully hard to tell if "Mr. Twee" is a sentence end or not, or if "stop. It" is supposed to be something else. That is, in the typewritten manuscript, the double-space following the full stop carries meaning which the typesetting system (HN's HTML encoder, here), would have to guess at. Or, you know, there's another way. Those of us who learnt to type properly can tip it off with our fuddly double-spaces.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Bingo on the semantic content. That's a point that seems utterly lost on most today. When I type, it's ASCII in vim. When I typeset, it's \LaTeX (or more often these days, Markdown). Which takes care of the fucking fiddly bits for me.
CharlesW 9y ago
> I learned to type on an IBM Selectric, I use mostly mono-spaced fonts, and two spaces after a full stop makes perfect sense. It's still considered fine to do that when using monospaced fonts, just as using the prime symbol (') instead of an apostrophe (’) won't raise any eyebrows in that scenario. When your goal is to make something that looks like it was typeset by someone with an awareness of typographical conventions, then understanding those can be helpful. ("Twee bloggers" didn't invent them.)
- KC8ZKF 9y ago
  "When your goal is to make something that looks like it was typeset by someone with an awareness of typographical conventions..." If by that you mean typesetting, I agree. Typing and typesetting are two different activities. LaTex, for example, will typeset both ".(one space)" and ".(two spaces)" into the same white space that is somewhat larger than one typed space and somewhat smaller than two.
  - cup-of-tea 9y ago
    I got into the habit of double spacing because it does make the TeX source code easier to read (and I often do just read that, rather than the typeset document), and also because emacs has a number of sentence based commands for which it uses the double space as a sentence delimiter.
  - CharlesW 9y ago
    > If by that you mean typesetting, I agree. Typing and typesetting are two different activities. Exactly, and many (non-developer) folks may not have ever experienced the "two spaces after sentences" convention if they haven't sat in a typing class with old-school typewriters, and haven't been instructed on formatting monospaced type.
- mrob 9y ago
  >the prime symbol (') The typewriter apostrophe isn't the same as the traditional prime symbol (′).
ashark 9y ago
I learned the basics on Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, which must have assumed a monospaced font because it taught the double-space-after-period style. Took years before I learned that wasn't always how you're supposed to type, and another couple years after that to fully break myself of it.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Or rather, my right thumb does. I learned to type on an IBM Selectric, I use mostly mono-spaced fonts, and two spaces after a full stop makes perfect sense. I went thirty years between learning it and thinking about it, and then some point-and-drool twee bloggers made it unfashionable. I actually learned to never use double-space-after-period for text that would be rendered directly (e.g., not by a typesetting toolchain that would replace it with a more appropriate but not available in ASCII wide space) in proportional fonts before the Web existed, and it seemed to be fairly widespread advice. This is absolutely not something that was originated by “point-and-drool twee bloggers”.

by KC8ZKF 9y ago

paulcole 9y ago

> then some point-and-drool twee bloggers made it unfashionable. Outside of newspapers, it was always unfashionable. I mean just look at a book, magazine, or even this site.

KC8ZKF 9y ago
Hacker News eats the second space. Which is fine. I'm not saying that typesetters should show two spaces between sentences, rather the edict against typing two spaces between sentences is wrong. Two spaces even has a (small) amount of semantic information. i.e. "This is a full stop and not part of an acronym or radix point, etc."
- ScottBurson 9y ago
  It's not Hacker News eating the space; it's actually how the browser renders text. That said, I agree. What I type into the computer is not typesetting commands; it's input to the renderer, whose job is to understand what I'm telling it and lay it out appropriately. So, putting one space after a period indicates an abbreviation rather than the end of a sentence; the renderer may or may not choose to lay these out differently, but at least it has the option.
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    HN could if it wanted to insert an  <space> following a full stop. It doesn't. One reason being Mr. Twee I-don't-use-two-spaces-after-a-full-stop, that it's awfully hard to tell if "Mr. Twee" is a sentence end or not, or if "stop. It" is supposed to be something else. That is, in the typewritten manuscript, the double-space following the full stop carries meaning which the typesetting system (HN's HTML encoder, here), would have to guess at. Or, you know, there's another way. Those of us who learnt to type properly can tip it off with our fuddly double-spaces.
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Bingo on the semantic content. That's a point that seems utterly lost on most today. When I type, it's ASCII in vim. When I typeset, it's \LaTeX (or more often these days, Markdown). Which takes care of the fucking fiddly bits for me.

CharlesW 9y ago

> I learned to type on an IBM Selectric, I use mostly mono-spaced fonts, and two spaces after a full stop makes perfect sense. It's still considered fine to do that when using monospaced fonts, just as using the prime symbol (') instead of an apostrophe (’) won't raise any eyebrows in that scenario. When your goal is to make something that looks like it was typeset by someone with an awareness of typographical conventions, then understanding those can be helpful. ("Twee bloggers" didn't invent them.)

KC8ZKF 9y ago
"When your goal is to make something that looks like it was typeset by someone with an awareness of typographical conventions..." If by that you mean typesetting, I agree. Typing and typesetting are two different activities. LaTex, for example, will typeset both ".(one space)" and ".(two spaces)" into the same white space that is somewhat larger than one typed space and somewhat smaller than two.
- cup-of-tea 9y ago
  I got into the habit of double spacing because it does make the TeX source code easier to read (and I often do just read that, rather than the typeset document), and also because emacs has a number of sentence based commands for which it uses the double space as a sentence delimiter.
- CharlesW 9y ago
  > If by that you mean typesetting, I agree. Typing and typesetting are two different activities. Exactly, and many (non-developer) folks may not have ever experienced the "two spaces after sentences" convention if they haven't sat in a typing class with old-school typewriters, and haven't been instructed on formatting monospaced type.
mrob 9y ago
>the prime symbol (') The typewriter apostrophe isn't the same as the traditional prime symbol (′).

ashark 9y ago

I learned the basics on Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, which must have assumed a monospaced font because it taught the double-space-after-period style. Took years before I learned that wasn't always how you're supposed to type, and another couple years after that to fully break myself of it.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Or rather, my right thumb does. I learned to type on an IBM Selectric, I use mostly mono-spaced fonts, and two spaces after a full stop makes perfect sense. I went thirty years between learning it and thinking about it, and then some point-and-drool twee bloggers made it unfashionable. I actually learned to never use double-space-after-period for text that would be rendered directly (e.g., not by a typesetting toolchain that would replace it with a more appropriate but not available in ASCII wide space) in proportional fonts before the Web existed, and it seemed to be fairly widespread advice. This is absolutely not something that was originated by “point-and-drool twee bloggers”.