4 ms·
> I will continue to double-space until I'm dead. Do you have a reason for doing so?
by apl 16y ago
> I will continue to double-space until I'm dead.
Do you have a reason for doing so?
- fexl 16y agoYes, because my typing teacher in 1975 told me to do it.
- flatline 16y agoI do - deeply ingrained muscle memory from a touch typing class in high school, conditioned over years.
- graywh 16y agoMy muscle memory (using 2 spaces) after ~6 months of typing class was so conditioned it made it impossible to help my teacher evaluation some new software that used 1 space.
- haploid 16y agoDouble spacing helps to set sentences off from each other visually. I prefer reading material that's double-spaced, so that's the way I prefer to write. It's also to some extent simply out of habit. But even if my only reason was because Miss Millie in the 3rd grade told me to( another appeal to authority ), I'm not writing desperate screeds admonishing everyone about being bad people because they aren't listening to Miss Millie.
- 3pt14159 16y agoDoes HN truncate double spaces? Testing this now. Otherwise I'm only picking up one space after your sentences. Edit: Looks like it does. Yay PG! Edit2: Looks like I forgot some basics of HTML. My 14 year old self would be very disappointed.
- Corrado 16y agoActually, its your browser that renders multiple spaces as a single space. If you want multiple spaces in your HTML you have to use the non-breakable space tag " ".
- xentronium 16y agoI believe there is unbreakable space character you could use for that purpose.
- flatline 16y agoThe HTML rendering engine in your browser actually consolidates each block of white space into a single visible space character. If you view source, there are two spaces there. So, there's a good reason not to use two spaces, as the web will only show the one.
- JoeAltmaier 16y agoThat's actually an argument for why it doesn't matter, so we can all continue to do as we please. Is there a good reason the browser messes up my spacing? Certainly not for readability!
- jemfinch 16y agoThe reason is clear: because it assists readability, and costs me nothing.
- neutronicus 16y agoAmong other things, it makes it easier to jump around by sentence in a text editor. I think the late Erik Naggum of comp.lang.lisp fame was always a two-spacer for this reason or some related one.
- runningdogx 16y agoI do. If you want to write a parsing program that can delineate sentences, doing so in the face of abbreviations can be difficult. If, for instance, a sentence ends with an abbreviation, and the next sentence starts with a proper noun, an algorithm would detect a run-on sentence and would have to resort to tearing the grammar in the two adjoining sentences apart to figure out where to split them. If there is a double space between sentences, the problem is reduced to a trivial string splitting operation. Furthermore, any app that visually displays the text should know that some people use two spaces between sentences, and can trivially correct for this if it's implementing its own fancy typography. HTML already ignores multiple contiguous 0x20 spaces. Any text rendering algorithm fancy enough to implement good typography can likewise simply ignore the double space. Double spaces between sentences have no mandatory effect on visual layout since layout algorithms can ignore the extra space, However, it can have a significant effect on the speed, if not accuracy, of text parsing algorithms.