3 ms·

Until ~10 years ago, I used to type two spaces after a period.

by rahimnathwani 2y ago

Daneel_ 2y ago
I still do, and I maintain that it’s easier to read text with double spaces after periods.
- _emacsomancer_ 2y ago
  TeX puts more space after periods/fullstops (which is why you're supposed to do special markup or other measures to mark '.' in the middle of sentences which aren't sentence-enders (e.g. like e.g.)). But it's generally smaller than the equivalent of two manual spaces. (A nice thing in (La)TeX is that one could follow the "two spaces after a full-stop" rule, which then has the advantage of being an explicit marking for sentence boundaries (which your editor might be able to navigate; Emacs has a convention of assuming two spaces after a sentence-ending '.'), but then the TeX typesetting will take care of making it look right. I lost the habit of actually doing this, for better or worse, except when flycheck/checkdoc/package-linter.el makes me do it for docstrings.)
- globnomulous 2y ago
  I used to feel similarly. Now I find the double space a visual distraction that doesn't in any way improve readability. The effect of the double space is, I suspect, a product of the reader's expectations: if you expect it, its absence creates mental work, detracting from readability; if you don't expect it, its presence is what creates mental work.
asveikau 2y ago
I'm still doing it when I am typing at a physical keyboard. Hard habit to break. I learned it so long ago too. You can tell when I've edited something on both a phone and a physical keyboard, based on the inconsistent use of spaces.
- rahimnathwani 2y ago
  Hard habit to break. I learned it so long ago too. Haha I learned to type organically, and it was only in my mid-40s that I retrained myself to type the correct way. It took something like 40 hours of practice on keybr.com before I could get close enough to my regular typing speed, such that I could switch over to the 'correct' method without it impacting my work. Retraining myself to stop doing double-spaces took maybe a week.
  - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
    Most word processors can be configured to flag double spaces. That gives feedback to break the habit.

Until ~10 years ago, I used to type two spaces after a period.

Daneel_ 2y ago

I still do, and I maintain that it’s easier to read text with double spaces after periods.

_emacsomancer_ 2y ago
TeX puts more space after periods/fullstops (which is why you're supposed to do special markup or other measures to mark '.' in the middle of sentences which aren't sentence-enders (e.g. like e.g.)). But it's generally smaller than the equivalent of two manual spaces. (A nice thing in (La)TeX is that one could follow the "two spaces after a full-stop" rule, which then has the advantage of being an explicit marking for sentence boundaries (which your editor might be able to navigate; Emacs has a convention of assuming two spaces after a sentence-ending '.'), but then the TeX typesetting will take care of making it look right. I lost the habit of actually doing this, for better or worse, except when flycheck/checkdoc/package-linter.el makes me do it for docstrings.)
globnomulous 2y ago
I used to feel similarly. Now I find the double space a visual distraction that doesn't in any way improve readability. The effect of the double space is, I suspect, a product of the reader's expectations: if you expect it, its absence creates mental work, detracting from readability; if you don't expect it, its presence is what creates mental work.

asveikau 2y ago

I'm still doing it when I am typing at a physical keyboard. Hard habit to break. I learned it so long ago too. You can tell when I've edited something on both a phone and a physical keyboard, based on the inconsistent use of spaces.

rahimnathwani 2y ago
Hard habit to break. I learned it so long ago too. Haha I learned to type organically, and it was only in my mid-40s that I retrained myself to type the correct way. It took something like 40 hours of practice on keybr.com before I could get close enough to my regular typing speed, such that I could switch over to the 'correct' method without it impacting my work. Retraining myself to stop doing double-spaces took maybe a week.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  Most word processors can be configured to flag double spaces. That gives feedback to break the habit.