Hacker News Reader

Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

Yep. For an explanation of why double-spacing is objectively wrong, read this:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/...

Isn't this the exact Slate.com article that the posted article deems inaccurate?

I believe the idea is that if we ignore the fact that this article refutes slate, we can pretend slate refutes this article.

>>if we ignore the fact that this article refutes slate

You seem to be having difficulty distinguishing opinions from facts.

I'm confused. Either you know information that makes the very specific examples and evidence in the article, and how they purportedly refute the slate article's claims about the source of double spacing (and thus casting doubt based on claims made based on that), which I would like to see, or I'm entirely unable to parse your meaning.

Calling ignorant what is indisputably taught in many places as standard syntax is pathetically pedantic. Honestly this is the first discussion of single vs double spacing rules that I've encountered. It's been taught to me since grade school and will take more than a vitriolic Slate article to break that habit.

>>It's been taught to me since grade school

A good habit to get into is always question what you are taught. And if the answer you are given is, "because that's the way it has always been done," then assume it is wrong.

Literally the only argument for double spacing is that it provides semantic separation. Except we already have something that does that. It's called a period. So when you are using both a period and double spacing, you are being redundant.

A double space is Nx more area for a visual cue.

N is at least 8 to 1.

Placing sentences on their own lines would even be better at offering visual cue.....oooh I see what you did there

From the Slate article you posted:

"Who says two spaces is wrong?" they wanted to know. Typographers, that's who. The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences.

The only argument (which is apparently historically inaccurate according to the parent article) made against double-spacing is an appeal to authority and 'the way it's always been done', exactly what you are rallying against in your last reply.

Besides, as has been pointed out already in this thread, a period followed by a single space (followed by a capitalized letter) does not solely occur in end-of-sentence contexts, so a period followed by two spaces does provide an added degree of semantic separation.

Personally, I have no preference. You do what you like, I'll do what looks good to me. I am amazed that someone would assume that I was uneducated or ignorant (like the typographer interviewed in the Slate article), because I usually put two spaces after a sentence-ending period.

Does that mean you're against uppercasing the first letter of a sentence?

i'll take on that argument: yes. uppercase is more or less redundant and, hopefully, will one day be phased out. we're already seeing language move in that direction; even acronyms and abbreviations are often written lowercase nowadays. lots of things would be much more convenient, and we could do away with 2 or 3 keys and 26 characters.

> Literally the only argument for double spacing is that it provides semantic separation.

"Mr. and Mrs. Jones went to St. Maarten, to see Mr. Jones, Jr. Ph.D., an M.D. who was studying further to get his D.D.S. from noted dentist, W.E.B. DuBois."

Having had to do it before, I can tell you that I've yet to find a bullet-proof way to parse that sentence (programmatically) and guarantee that you weren't going to get random sentence parts.

Assuming pristine data, I could just split on .<space><space> and be done with it.

Did you even read the article?

lol, dude that was funny.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com