
Two spaces after a period: Why you should never, ever do it. - rpledge
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html
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sp332
Until 4 paragraphs in I was hoping this was a joke. It's 100% arbitrary and
based completely on aesthetic judgment. And even though the author explicitly
admits this, he's still comfortable condemning anyone who disagrees with him
as ignorant and championing his opinion as "the one true way".

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antidoh
Every rule we have about spelling and punctuation is arbitrary, yet I notice
you follow current arbitrary convention in your post.

We agree on convention, and on arbiters of convention like the Chicago Manual
of Style cited in the article, because of convenience. Seeing words spelled
the same way means that we can see the words and move on, rather than the
letters as we try to figure out, however briefly, what word is being spelled.

Convention is good, however arbitrary. If fussy people at the CMS said to use
two spaces then I would. But they say one, and I move with the well understood
herd.

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sp332
HTML generally renders any number of spaces as a single space. (Try it!) I
often put two spaces in proportional fonts, but I don't usually put two spaces
after a period in monospace (which is the font HN uses for editing posts)
because it's already pretty wide. I don't complain if people use other styles
though. The article is adamant that everyone is wrong. "Why you should never,
ever use it" says the title. Except for old publications, or if you're using a
monospaced or very irregular font, says the body. Or really any time we feel
like it, say the typographers. He derides the opposition as being _equally
arbitrary_ , not actually any worse.

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antidoh
I took the author's hysterics as just a literary tool to make a point in an
interesting way. I doubt if he's worried about a two-spaced apocalypse.

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droberts
I agree with the author, especially since any modern typesetting program
should automatically detect a period followed by a space and automatically set
the optimum distance for the particular font being used. My biggest pet peeve
is people who insist on putting hard returns after every line of text, thereby
creating a huge amount of work for anyone who needs to reformat it.

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plant42
Complaining or arguing about whether one space or two is correct or the "one
true way" is just a little bit silly.

I figure the vast majority will use which ever way they were taught or that
which they are most comfortable with. Me, I use the two space way for no other
reason than it is a habit from being taught that way.

Some people have far too much time on their hands.

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opminion
The article just argues by referring to convention, which is rather
unfulfilling. It succeeds in pointing out that the two space convention made
sense with monospaced fonts.

For many of us monospaced fonts are not a thing of the past...

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dkersten
_For many of us monospaced fonts are not a thing of the past..._

Indeed. I use monospaced fonts all the time. Mostly for programming, but also
if I am writing a plain text file, I like my editor to use monospaced fonts.
Yet I have never had a problem with the words seeming too "loose" or had any
difficulty determining the end of sentences or words.

I also never learned to use two spaces. Maybe its because I'm in Europe, but
afaik everyone I know here uses one space and would never even consider that
two spaces could be correct.

