7 ms·
Interesting thing is, living in Europe, AFAIR I never heard about "use two spaces" rule until now (even if in a long monospace plaintext, I might have subconsci
by jakub_g 7y ago
Interesting thing is, living in Europe, AFAIR I never heard about "use two spaces" rule until now (even if in a long monospace plaintext, I might have subconsciously used it sometimes to disambiguate).
If I saw that in a Word document, however, I would have thought the author was a technically-illiterate person who puts extra spaces around commas, quotes, parentheses etc. or uses 10 spaces instead of 1 tab for indentation.
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Talking typography trivia: in French language, it's mandatory to put a space before "double-characters" like : ; ? ! - the side effect is that it often allows to easily recognize a French person online even if they write in English.
Most people: Hello! How are you?
French people : Hello ! How are you ?
- 205guy 7y agoI think you mean « French people : ... » I find the extra space much more common with the colon than with exclamation or question marks.
- jakub_g 7y agoHa, you got me - I was in non-French thinking mode until the colon - edited :)
- benhurmarcel 7y agoA lot of French people are aware of the difference when they write in English though.
- ginko 7y agoI remember the two space rule driving me crazy when I used GNU typing tutor for learning touch typing. I ended up modifying the tutorial files to get rid of them.
- tasogare 7y agoFirst time I hear of it too, and that could explain how the "dot shortcut" (two spaces transforms into a dot followed by space) made it into the iPhone.
- Theodores 7y agoI only just worked out that the two spaces I see in text that I format must invariably come from Word docs exported as text. I am from the eight bit era so I intuitively save bytes where I can.
- recursive 7y agoNot only. Some of us just always type like that. In my case, I almost never use Word, so this change is not going to affect me.
- roelschroeven 7y agoI learned to type when I was a kid (in Flanders), around the year 1985 or so (on a purely mechanical typewriter) and we learned to type two spaces after a period. Also I never learned to put a space before colons etc. I feel like I know the rule is to not do that, but I'm not sure where, if ever, I learned that rule. In Belgium we use the same AZERTY keyboard layout with France (largely) but apparently the typographical rules vary widely.
- gglnx 7y agoIn German this is called Plenken [1] and if you're writing spaces before such double-characters, many people will think that you're not the smartest person. Angry comments under news articles often using this. Something this is called "Deppenleerzeichen" (idiot's space), but this is yet another thing in the German language [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenken [2] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leerzeichen_in_Komposita https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leerzeichen_in_Komposita
- leddt 7y agoI'm French Canadian and I usually avoid the space before those characters because they have a tendency to wrap on a new line by themselves. You are supposed to use non breaking spaces but most tools won't do it automatically, and they are not trivial to type.
- lloeki 7y agoIIRC alt-space inserts a NBSP utf8 character on macOS and Linux basically anywhere. It’s been too long since I used Windows but I recall something like that working (maybe only in some select software though). Now the visual feedback though... It usually appears as a regular space.
- justinclift 7y ago> ... Linux basically anywhere. Probably not in KDE, as that (by default) has alt-space bring up the Plasma "Search Bar".
- weinzierl 7y agoIn TeX or LaTeX the command to turn the extra space after the period on and off is called \frenchspacing. I remember this because the proof reader of my theses asked me why I had so inconsistent spacing between the sentences and told me that I should stick with a single space. I remember that I had little time to figure it out and that I was very happy when I found that the \frenchspacing command would do it. I don't remember if \frenchspacing means extra space or no extra space though. Also don't remember if it is a TeX or LaTeX command, and therefore if Knuth called the option like that or if it is Lamport's invention.
- ken 7y agoWhile we're on the topic of typographical prejudice, I confess that if I see a Microsoft Word document at all, I tend to assume the author is not so technically literate. The intersection of "people I've seen use Word" and "people who know how to write a program" is extremely small.
- sideshowb 7y agoWow, what industry do you work in and for how long? Reasons for technical people to use word: 1. A non technical person may need to edit or even just comment on the document at some point 2. It's stupid, but in a lot situations people are conditioned to take an email with the real content attached in a word doc more seriously than a plain email. You could use a PDF to the same effect but see point 1. 3. Actually imo it's the best tool for the job it's designed for. Markup/markdown and adobe have their places but not in everyday business writing. Or even scientific, it beats latex for journal papers imo (see point 1).
- enriquto 7y ago> Wow, what industry do you work in and for how long? I don't know about the OP, but in the mathematics community you need to have a lot of confidence on yourself to write a paper in Word. It would be a much worse offense than using comic-sans, and it would likely be interpreted as a flamboyant deviation and unnecessary attention whoring.
- sideshowb 7y agoInteresting. I have once written for a journal that insisted on latex but can't say I found it a good way to work (and that's after plenty of experience with it including a phd thesis). I can see how it might be better for math heavy writing, especially 10 years ago, but most of the basic latex math commands work in word now anyway. If that field frowns on word so much it should just insist on latex for paper submissions to save anyone the embarrassment, but people enjoy being dicks I guess.
- 7y ago
- michaelcampbell 7y agoNot just French. I see it a lot from other non-native-english speaking cultures.
- aembleton 7y agoWhen I did my Pitman typing qualifications in the UK in the late 90s, 2 spaces was mandatory. That is where I learnt it from, and still keep doing it to this day as muscle memory.