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Comment by anigbrowl | Hacker News Reader

Two spaces are used to semantically separate sentences in source format.

That's the function of the period, which does the job perfectly well already, as you demonstrate yourself.

Any author is free to choose how many spaces to use between sentences, but collapsing 2 spaces when editing others' documents is wrong, and so is preventing an author from using two spaces. Doing so removes information content from the document, which can only be restored perfectly by humans (or other things with human-level natural language processing ability).

I could just as easily argue that it's wrong to include redundant semantic information. If I were to begin using double commas,, should everyone else alter their reading habits to accommodate my affectation? Fuck that.

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>That's the function of the period,

This breaks in the case of "Mr. Jones went to the store. He enjoys buying things." The spacing after 'Mr.' should be less than after 'store.'. If two spaces are prohibited, you have the following options, neither of them particularly satisfactory:

-The user must input some form of special Unicode space character after 'Mr.'

-The display software must include a list of all words that, when followed by a period, should not include extra space (e.g., "Mr, Mrs, Messrs, etc, e.g, i.e" and so forth).

Says you. I was fine with it being the same when I learned to type (on a typewriter) and having text-presentation software do some micro kerning on certain abbreviations doesn't bother me in the least; automating such drudgery is one of the main reasons to use computers in the first place.

A third option is to dispense with the punctuation marks on abbreviations and simply refer to 'Mr Jones.' This took a little getting used to, but since real grammatical consistency would involve abbreviating 'Mister' as 'M'r,' (a practice which you can see in some older books and which persisted with obscure words like f'c's'le) dropping the period seems simpler. It's good enough for the Economist, whose style guide I prefer.

Consider 'T. S. Eliot'. I guess 'T S Eliot' could give an alternative, but it hasn't gained traction. I'm sure there are more cases.

What's "f'c's'le"?

I would guess (but don't know) that it's forecastle.

It is indeed. Since it rhymes with "voxel", the "fo'c'sle" spelling is a much better one than "forecastle".

Sure is. :)

I'm a read-aloud-in-my-head kind of reader, and I remember really struggling with that one in Moby Dick.

(It's "fo'c'sle," by the way, sometimes even encountered as "fo'c's'le." In the latter case, I wonder why simply writing "forecastle" wasn't the easier choice back in the day).

It's closer to the actual pronunciation of "folk•sel"

In contrast, The Economist's style guide does not use periods after titles like Dr, Mr, Mrs, or Messrs:

http://www.economist.com/style-guide/titles

The part which you omitted is that you can also use a period for denoting an abbreviation. It then can become ambiguous as to whether you're parsing that, or the end of a line. The only way to then determine whether it's an abbreviation is to use some other form of heuristic, which becomes a pain in the ass.

Regardless, we're seriously into Parkinson's Law of Triviality territory. I'll support either way as long as the bike shed has an aluminum roof.

I could just as easily argue that it's wrong to include redundant semantic information. If I were to begin using double commas,, should everyone else alter their reading habits to accommodate my affectation?

Do double commas serve some purpose other than a presentational quirk? Double spaces at the end of a sentence have semantic meaning distinct from a single space, as shown by other replies.

I think for your argument to make sense you either need to show that double spaces don't have any special distinguishing characteristic at the end of a sentence, or allow that they do, and double commas to as well, but we're better off without them. Otherwise, I don't really see a relation between double commas and double spaces at the end of a sentence.

The double spaces only serve as a presentational quirk, too. The amount of space after the sentence ends does not determine whether or not it has ended. Most mass-produced material no longer uses longer spaces after the end of a sentence, and websites require CSS or the use of special character entities to produce longer spaces, so it follows that most people do not require double spaces when reading as an indication that the sentence has ended.

The sequence "period space space" is also not reliable for a computer to determine the end of a sentence, either, so in building a lexer you would likely remove the consecutive spaces (outside of content that is marked as pre-formatted) and use some other method of determining whether a period is being used for an abbreviation, the end of a sentence, or some other purpose. In fact, you might even throw out the period, since it is no longer a necessary part of the content (though the parser would add it back in for output in most situations).

The amount of space after the sentence ends does not determine whether or not it has ended.

Let me re-phrase to clarify my point. Double spaces after a period more accurately distinguish the end of a sentence from other possible meanings. See bmelton's comments.

The sequence "period space space" is also not reliable for a computer to determine the end of a sentence

Not reliable because of some other inherent ambiguity, or because not everyone is using double spaces? If you are arguing we shouldn't do it because not everyone does it, I'm not sure how to respond... Is there some other case where a period followed by two spaces is acceptable, and doesn't mark the end of a sentence?

WTF?? So,, yes,, use double-commas to drive home your point since you must have had some reason to put them there. I will continue to use double space after the end of a sentence for the same reason.

WTF?? So,, yes,, use double-commas to drive home your point since you must have had some reason to put them there.

My point is that you would be quite right to reject writing in which someone employed double commas as an affectation. Just because a writer thinks it says something special does not mean readers have to agree.

My point is that you would be quite right to reject writing in which someone employed double commas as an affectation

Personally, I think writing should be judged mostly on content, not presentation. Sometimes the line can be hard to determine on which is which, but to me that we reject things based on presentation (which we all do), is an unfortunate circumstance of our human nature.

to me that we reject things based on presentation (which we all do), is an unfortunate circumstance of our human nature

Not at all. Assuming that the required presentation is well-known (not a secret), and is relatively easy to implement (e.g. doesn't require specialized equipment), what is the reviewer supposed to think of a writer who couldn't follow the instructions?

Among other things, standardized formatting (not commas, but fonts and margins) also makes life easier for the reviewer, for instance letting him/her know at a glance how long a piece will be. And they have to scan many, many pieces, most of them crap.

I'm speaking as a writer who submits stories using standard manuscript format. Writing provides ample opportunity for creativity. I don't need to use my creativity in font or margin or punctuation choice. And it's just not that hard.

If anything, you support my point. That you know you must make the job easier for the reader because otherwise they may not get to the actual thing you are writing about, the content, is exactly what I'm talking about.

In an ideal world, your writing would have just as much chance of being read and appreciated if it were presented in all caps or all lowercase, single spaced or double.

I simply think it's unfortunate, if understandable for multiple reasons, that we don't live in that world.

In an ideal world, your writing would have just as much chance of being read and appreciated if it were presented in all caps

DO YOU REALLY THINK THAT IN AN IDEAL WORLD WE WOULD GIVE AN EQUAL SHARE OF OUR LIMITED TIME AND ATTENTION TO PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T YET FIGURED OUT THAT ALL CAPS IS UGLY, HARD TO READ, AND CONNOTES SHOUTING???

In an ideal world, we wouldn't have limited time, and could make decisions based on the best criteria. Whether someone has figured out the best way to communicate with their audience should have no bearing on whether their ideas have merit. It does matter though, which is obvious. That doesn't keep me from wishing the world was a better place.

Publishers routinely reject things simply based on presentation for the simple fact that most authors are willing to do a significant amount of the work (that would otherwise be done by typesetters and editors) just to ensure they get published, and it's rarely going to hurt the publisher if the author takes their work somewhere else, instead.

My theory for the mass use of the double space is that it was such a common requirement from publishers at one time (and in some areas probably still is) simply because it distributed a massive amount of menial work and most people can simply make a habit of it and never bother to question or complain about it. Another is that, once taught this particular practice, many people confuse it with the requirement that a document is double-spaced.

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