5 ms·

Articles with the word "never" in the title: Beware their myopia, lack of vision, and narrow-mindedness. Articles with the word "ever" in the title: Beware th

by edw519 16y ago

Articles with the word "never" in the title: Beware their myopia, lack of vision, and narrow-mindedness. Articles with the word "ever" in the title: Beware their gross generalizations, lack of gray area, and hasty conclusions. Articles with both the words "never" and "ever" in the title: Never, ever read them. (oops)

stcredzero 16y ago
What galls me about two-spacers isn't just their numbers. It's their certainty that they're right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the "correct" number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone-everyone!-said it was proper to use two spaces. What the articles fails to clearly mention, is that many style manuals used in high schools in the 80's were steeped in the monospaced technology of the time and taught two spaces as correct. Samantha Jacobs, a reading and journalism teacher at Norwood High School in Norwood, Col., told me that she requires her students to use two spaces after a period instead of one, even though she acknowledges that style manuals no longer favor that approach. This is one of the few mentions in this article of this fact -- that two-spacing was once dogma. This makes me seriously doubt the objectivity of this article. (Actually, I don't think this article is attempting any degree of objectivity at all.) HN confuses this issue, since we type our comments monospaced, but they are displayed proportional. (Which is why I also double-dash!)
- rthomas6 16y ago
  My high school honors English teacher made us use two spaces, (class of 2006), and since then, nobody has bothered to tell me any differently.
- baby 16y ago
  You're suppose to write the dot after the end of the parenthesis not before !
  - alanfalcon 16y ago
    Actually, you should use a period inside parentheses if the enclosed material is meant to stand alone as a sentence. By the way, there is no space before the exclaimation mark in American English. As for double spacing after a sentence, I had broken myself of the habit once I learned all publications use single spaces, but the iPhone has conditioned me to use double spaces again since that's the shortcut to drop a period at the end of a sentence.
    - alexophile 16y ago
      The double-tap on an iPhone only drops a period and single space, although I imagine it does reinforce a habit of double spacing.
      - alanfalcon 16y ago
        Exactly, when I'm at a computer I sometimes find myself back in my old habit of double spacing, and that's because of the double space tap on the iPhone. Perhaps I should disable the double tap space and get back in the habit of sliding my finger from [123] to the period key to end sentences (which automatically returns to the alphabet keyboard). Certainly it would save me from having to press delete after the double space to end a paragraph.
- burgerbrain 16y ago
  In the case of the computer programmers, they were most certainly correct. Is the author really so quick to condemn while not realizing that programming is almost always done with monospaced fonts? Anyway, I never have to worry about this these days anyway. Worrying about trivialities like this is what LaTeX is for ;)
  - rwl 16y ago
    Indeed, this really only seems to be an issue for the (admittedly large majority) of computer users who: - write documents in a WYSIWYG editor - don't publish those documents on the Web, or another setting where the reader's software (as opposed to the editor) makes decisions about how to display the text Basically, this sounds like one more reason not to use Word (and similar), or share documents in .doc/.odt/etc. format [1]. It shouldn't even affect HTML email. [1] Cf. http://goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html http://goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html
  - neilc 16y ago
    Worrying about trivialities like this is what LaTeX is for ;) You still need to pay attention to this using LaTeX -- LaTeX will (usually) insert a wider-than-normal space after a period, which isn't always correct (e.g., "Mrs.", "etc.", and so forth). You can avoid this using "~".
    - nycticorax 16y ago
      I think you mean "\ ". "~" is for when you want an inter-word space, and also don't want TeX to break the line there.
- frobozz 16y ago
  The author also fails to grasp the fact that if "Everyone-everyone!" (including "accomplished professionals") follows a given convention, then that convention must be correct, because that is what convention is. Prescriptivists are universally incorrect, when they criticise universally practised convention.
- apotheon 16y ago
  > What the articles fails to clearly mention . . . is a whole lot of stuff: http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.014.10.05.57 http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.014.10.05.57
mmaunder 16y ago
Can't believe he managed to wrench 2000 words out of that subject.
- apotheon 16y ago
  It's not tough to write 2000 words or so on the subject. It's just difficult to write 2000 words or so on the subject and still end up with so little substance.
funthree 16y ago
> I asked people what they considered to be the "correct" number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. >Which—for the record—is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong. Seriously? That article felt like it was written by someone at 4chan. Why did this get so many upvotes?

by edw519 16y ago

stcredzero 16y ago

What galls me about two-spacers isn't just their numbers. It's their certainty that they're right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the "correct" number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone-everyone!-said it was proper to use two spaces. What the articles fails to clearly mention, is that many style manuals used in high schools in the 80's were steeped in the monospaced technology of the time and taught two spaces as correct. Samantha Jacobs, a reading and journalism teacher at Norwood High School in Norwood, Col., told me that she requires her students to use two spaces after a period instead of one, even though she acknowledges that style manuals no longer favor that approach. This is one of the few mentions in this article of this fact -- that two-spacing was once dogma. This makes me seriously doubt the objectivity of this article. (Actually, I don't think this article is attempting any degree of objectivity at all.) HN confuses this issue, since we type our comments monospaced, but they are displayed proportional. (Which is why I also double-dash!)

rthomas6 16y ago
My high school honors English teacher made us use two spaces, (class of 2006), and since then, nobody has bothered to tell me any differently.
baby 16y ago
You're suppose to write the dot after the end of the parenthesis not before !
- alanfalcon 16y ago
  Actually, you should use a period inside parentheses if the enclosed material is meant to stand alone as a sentence. By the way, there is no space before the exclaimation mark in American English. As for double spacing after a sentence, I had broken myself of the habit once I learned all publications use single spaces, but the iPhone has conditioned me to use double spaces again since that's the shortcut to drop a period at the end of a sentence.
  - alexophile 16y ago
    The double-tap on an iPhone only drops a period and single space, although I imagine it does reinforce a habit of double spacing.
    - alanfalcon 16y ago
      Exactly, when I'm at a computer I sometimes find myself back in my old habit of double spacing, and that's because of the double space tap on the iPhone. Perhaps I should disable the double tap space and get back in the habit of sliding my finger from [123] to the period key to end sentences (which automatically returns to the alphabet keyboard). Certainly it would save me from having to press delete after the double space to end a paragraph.
burgerbrain 16y ago
In the case of the computer programmers, they were most certainly correct. Is the author really so quick to condemn while not realizing that programming is almost always done with monospaced fonts? Anyway, I never have to worry about this these days anyway. Worrying about trivialities like this is what LaTeX is for ;)
- rwl 16y ago
  Indeed, this really only seems to be an issue for the (admittedly large majority) of computer users who: - write documents in a WYSIWYG editor - don't publish those documents on the Web, or another setting where the reader's software (as opposed to the editor) makes decisions about how to display the text Basically, this sounds like one more reason not to use Word (and similar), or share documents in .doc/.odt/etc. format [1]. It shouldn't even affect HTML email. [1] Cf. http://goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html http://goldmark.org/netrants/no-word/attach.html
- neilc 16y ago
  Worrying about trivialities like this is what LaTeX is for ;) You still need to pay attention to this using LaTeX -- LaTeX will (usually) insert a wider-than-normal space after a period, which isn't always correct (e.g., "Mrs.", "etc.", and so forth). You can avoid this using "~".
  - nycticorax 16y ago
    I think you mean "\ ". "~" is for when you want an inter-word space, and also don't want TeX to break the line there.
frobozz 16y ago
The author also fails to grasp the fact that if "Everyone-everyone!" (including "accomplished professionals") follows a given convention, then that convention must be correct, because that is what convention is. Prescriptivists are universally incorrect, when they criticise universally practised convention.
apotheon 16y ago
> What the articles fails to clearly mention . . . is a whole lot of stuff: http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.014.10.05.57 http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.014.10.05.57

mmaunder 16y ago

Can't believe he managed to wrench 2000 words out of that subject.

apotheon 16y ago
It's not tough to write 2000 words or so on the subject. It's just difficult to write 2000 words or so on the subject and still end up with so little substance.

funthree 16y ago

> I asked people what they considered to be the "correct" number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces. >Which—for the record—is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong. Seriously? That article felt like it was written by someone at 4chan. Why did this get so many upvotes?