Nothing Says over 40 Like Two Spaces After a Period | Hacker News Reader

Nothing Says over 40 Like Two Spaces After a Period

cultofpedagogy.com

20 pointsbehnamoh53 comments

Pedantry, warfare for indulgent. Your passion for spaces rises commensurately with the ennui in your life. Are not these the cultural flourishes of nuance that bring social majesty and depth to our world? So quickly we judge, categorize, and discriminate those who defy our narrow acceptance of proper.

Where will you turn for knowledge if only single-spaced bodies of work stand as acceptable to your delicate sensibility? What a poor, daft man that simpleton Einstein must be with his extra spaces.

Let go your hate, extend grace to all, engage sincerely, and be the light.

On the other hand, people who use tabs in code are philistines... there's just no room for them (Bwaahahahahahah)

I agree with you except s/tabs/spaces/. :)

I use both, randomly.

The Emacs manual taught me to end sentences with two spaces after the period. https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Se...

Emacs is over 40. While GNU Emacs is 37 years old; but, Stallman wrote the first version of Emacs several years before that.

Well, after reading that article, and particularly the offensive title...

I will most definitely keep using two.

I may start. Oh, that was easy.

Edit: They stole my double space!

Don't worry, keep doing it anyway because it just _feels_ right.

I double-space because 99% of the time i’m writing in a monospace font and the visual separation is useful.

adjusting the kerning of the final result is what my typesetter is for, so I don’t fret much about it during composition.

I learned to type with two spaces after a period myself, and resisted switching to one space after a period for several years after it was no longer required, but at his point I switched to one space at least fifteen years ago now, maybe twenty. It's definitely possible to switch.

It actually makes it easier to parse dense text.

Exactly. That tiny black dot could use a little help from some trailing whitespace. Written text isn't that clear all the time.

Satoshi Nakamoto used 2 spaces after a period.

Let me guess. Every time the block size doubles you'll halve the number of spaces you use?

My boss and I have gotten into it about this. He puts two spaces after a period, I put one space. I went through and removed his double spaces and replace them with single spaces and he got mad. I’m 40, he’s 60. I learned to type on an Apple II, he apparently did not..

Consistency for the sake of consistency is pure busywork.

What about consistency for the sake of presenting a unified writing style across your company? It's definitely important if you're a newspaper.

Wait until you work with someone who codes with tabs instead of spaces.

(Or vice versa if you’re a tabs-person, no judgement).

I'm the worst. I use tabs, but then I add spaces when one line of code is broken into more than one line on the screen. e.g. I like the second line of function parameters to line up directly under the first, regardless of how long the function name is.

I don’t think you’re the worst. Indent with tabs, pad with spaces is a pretty common rule in tabs community, afaik.

Edit: worst are those with auto-reindent-it-my-way-on-save feature always on.

...Wow. I'm speechless at that. I don't know what I would do to that person in a dark alley....

What's wrong with being over 40?

Indeed...

(Apparently using ellipses makes me old too)

The only valid culture is what young people do apparently. Being older is not allowed!

German (nearly 40) here and I hadn't even heard about it until like 10 years ago, from an American.

I assume it's just an American thing. I'm from the UK and nobody here uses 2 spaces either - and however many we use, it's after a full stop.

But this article was published in 2014, so someone "over 40" back then would be about 48+ years old in today's harsh single-spaced modern reality.

So we should still use two spaces in monospaced fonts? Like on this very site?

I used to do it all the time, it took years to stop doing it automatically.

The monospaced font here is just while typing a response in the input box, right? It doesn't show up like that in the posts. I don't think that warrants typing with two spaces, especially since it will display in a different, non-monospaced font.

Why can't I type two spaces after the period and let the software figure out how to typeset it? That's how it worked for years in html, then sites like facebook come along and use "white-space: pre-wrap" to force the extra space to show up, even though it's not a monospace font. What's the reason for this?

I’m a few years shy of 40 and I remember using these religiously as a kid typing on the computer. However I don’t remember why or who taught it to me, and I can’t remember when I quit. Probably ended around when I started using AIM and stopped using word processors to write stories.

The double period provides rhythm to writing.

With a typewriter...I have one...that rhythm is important.

It separates the rhythm dictated by line length from the rhythm of ideas.

I can, and often do, replace the rhythm of the double space with the rhythm of a double return.

Or, as here, a double enter.

But yes, I am over forty.

Still every generation thinks they invented sex.

I'll stop double spacing when you kids under 40 use proper capitalization, punctuation, and correct they're/their assignment in your business emails. Deal?

ironically; i can stop doing any of those things and itll be visible in my content on the web. but even if you use double-space, the browser will automatically strip that stuff away as a "mistake" if not the web service will do it for you via some ''stripping''.

so youre doomed to loose old man :) You're double-spaces are disappearing automagically.

Just as a reference regarding how br0wsers treat white-space:

> In the case of HTML, whitespace is largely ignored — whitespace in between words is treated as a single character, and whitespace at the start and end of elements and outside elements is ignored. Take the following minimal example:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Document_Ob...

Are you  sure?

loose?

You missed 5 other things on that line alone.

You're double-spaces are disappearing automagically

Better than any /s tag. Thanks!

If they can rant and gatekeep about double spaces, I’ll throw my rant into to ring regarding “/s”.

Once you drop a “/s” I to your writing or post, it actually cancels out the sarcasm you worked to craft.

And for you folks who can’t detect sarcasm unless there is a “/s” in the post, bless your heart. (Go look that “bless your heart” bit up to get a sense of what I mean by that)

And you people who reply to sarcasm properly posted without the “/s”…with an “/s” in an attempt to be helpful to all other readers, screw you the most.

Sequences of whitespace are not collapsed when using "white-space: pre-wrap", which more and more sites are using (e.g. Facebook).

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/white-space

All kids I know can do this. What they can not is not to use images everywhere (animated smiles, stickers, memes).

Did you mean "u kids?"

As a latex user (primarily, I do use MS word for small docs sometimes), this is moot because it does all the spacing for you on compile. Though, when co-authoring with double spacers, it still bothers me because you can plainly see them in the source text.

The followup link is imo a much better read.

Also a mid 30s double-space person here. We exist!

Trained on the 1926 Underwood (mechanical) typewriter, complete with margin bells.

Always two spaces.

Anyone know where one can get a black ribbon spool for such a typewriter?

It’s so much easier to scan text with two spaces.

Two spaces after a period = end of a sentence. One space after a period = not necessarily end of a sentence.

Our typing class in high school taught two spaces on old apple 2e computers.

The issue was that the teacher was still using a book out of the 50s.

Hasn't everybody configured two spaces to be replaced by a period and a space? Who is typing periods any more?!

This is the default on most iPhone apps. May be an OS feature, not sure. It's the main reason I still double space on iOS.

Ageism. Ageism pretending at propriety.

Disgusting.

(2014)

With an important self aware follow up.

https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/price-of-snark/

And please stop using QWERTY. Well, of course you are not able to do so but at least do not teach next generation that there are no other layouts.

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