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| One Space, or Two?; Which is proper? | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 19 2011, 09:31 AM (1,010 Views) | |
| KlavierBauer | Jan 19 2011, 09:31 AM Post #1 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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I'm interested to get AL's take on this, as someone "in the know." After a period, one space or two? |
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"I realize you want him to touch you all over and give you babies, but his handling of the PR side really did screw the pooch." - Ivory Thumper "He said sleepily: "Don't worry mom, my dick is like hot logs in the morning." - Apple | |
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| jon-nyc | Jan 19 2011, 09:35 AM Post #2 |
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Cheers
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I do two and always have. |
| In my defense, I was left unsupervised. | |
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| KlavierBauer | Jan 19 2011, 09:40 AM Post #3 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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That's how we've all learned, though the article is telling me I'm flat out wrong for doing that, and now I don't know who to believe! My second grade teacher Mrs. Wong, or the Modern Language Association Style Manual? |
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"I realize you want him to touch you all over and give you babies, but his handling of the PR side really did screw the pooch." - Ivory Thumper "He said sleepily: "Don't worry mom, my dick is like hot logs in the morning." - Apple | |
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| bachophile | Jan 19 2011, 09:52 AM Post #4 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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all u want to know and more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing |
| "I don't know much about classical music. For years I thought the Goldberg Variations were something Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg did on their wedding night." Woody Allen | |
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| Axtremus | Jan 19 2011, 09:52 AM Post #5 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Forget the style manual developed in the typewriter age. Whether you put one or two white spaces (one or two 0x20 ASCII characters) make no difference to most HTML rendering. One space vs. two also do not make consistent difference when you use variable width fonts and the word processor dynamically adjust ("justify") lines. "Layout" and "typesetting" should put in just the right amount of space to make reading easy and the displayed/printed pages look good. So save yourself some keystrokes and just type in one white space character (ASCII 0x20). Let the typesetting/rendering software figure out how much white space to leave on the displayed/printed page. (Heck, even the iPhone keyboard has enough sense to treat double tapping of the "space bar" as a short cut to insert a period ".") |
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| KlavierBauer | Jan 19 2011, 10:07 AM Post #6 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Ax: That idea leads to the rendering inconsistencies that plagued early typesetting - hence standards and best practices. Whether it should be one space or two, I can't authoritatively say - but as for programming languages, typically all whitespace is ignored. Any white space you see is built in, and it's not always done consistently, which is why many programming languages have ways to display text in more standards compliant ways. HTML is in no way consistent about this. Entering text into a form element such as <textarea> (as we do whenever we post here), one can easily add in as much or as little space as one wants to. Entering that same text into other HTML elements however, would remove all but single space characters, which in HTML is the non-breaking space ( ). The concept of "space" depends as well on the font, and what the width of one "character" is. Even indents change largely depending on context. "Best Practice" in development is to use a 4 space indent, but that isn't always the case, and isn't what's used in text. I guess my only point is, it's equally inconsistent to just dump text into an HTML element, and hope the combination of browser, code, and rendering engine allocate the proper space. |
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"I realize you want him to touch you all over and give you babies, but his handling of the PR side really did screw the pooch." - Ivory Thumper "He said sleepily: "Don't worry mom, my dick is like hot logs in the morning." - Apple | |
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| Aqua Letifer | Jan 19 2011, 10:10 AM Post #7 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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Both Wiki and Ax are dead wrong in at least one particular case. It entirely depends on what you're writing. AP Style requires one, as does Chicago and just about every other format out there. But Standard Manuscript Format (SMF) requires two spaces. Always have, always will. Due to blogging, internet articles and other more "informal" modes of writing, it has been more and more acceptable to just use one space for everything. But I still use two when I'm writing in SMF. Same goes for two spaces after colons. Single spaces for everything is amateur hour. |
| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| Axtremus | Jan 19 2011, 10:12 AM Post #8 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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@KB, I'm saying it's out of your control. Unless you want to go back to using typewriters, whether you put in one space or two is of little consequence. The layout/typesetting software will interpret/render as it sees fit. The meaningful argument to have now would be to argue how much white space the software should leave, not how many ASCII 0x20 characters the human should input. |
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| Axtremus | Jan 19 2011, 10:16 AM Post #9 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Regarding SMF ... This is how it will end up: Does not matter how many spaces you type in, you tell your word processor software to "apply SMF" to a document (or portions thereof), and it does the right thing. |
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| Aqua Letifer | Jan 19 2011, 10:20 AM Post #10 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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Out of my control. What the hell are you talking about? Anytime I prepare something to submit for publication, I reformat what I wrote so that it fits SMF, which includes two spaces after sentence endings and colons. And you're also wrong about what would and would not be "a reasonable argument." Another condition of SMF is that the font chosen should be one that uses identical space for each character, whether it be an "m" or an "i". The reason for this is so that the entire text is consistent in spacing, and is easier for an editor to follow and predict how long it will take him to read a particular manuscript. The other reason for the standard spaced font, in conjunction with the double spaces after periods and colons, is so that editors can easily and quickly identify the difference between colons and periods, and other punctuation marks. This also allows a manuscript to be read much easier and faster. It's not irrelevant or out of anybody's control, it's an industry standard. |
| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| Aqua Letifer | Jan 19 2011, 10:23 AM Post #11 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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Try it sometime. It's not that easy. You write a manuscript more than 20 pages in length and I guaran-damn-tee you'll miss more than a couple. And inconsistency's a graver sin than poor formatting. |
| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| jon-nyc | Jan 19 2011, 10:24 AM Post #12 |
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Cheers
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For me the habit is so ingrained it would be hard to stop. Like moving my space bar or something. |
| In my defense, I was left unsupervised. | |
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| Axtremus | Jan 19 2011, 10:25 AM Post #13 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Was responding to KB with that post. |
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| Aqua Letifer | Jan 19 2011, 10:25 AM Post #14 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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Ah word.
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| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| Axtremus | Jan 19 2011, 10:27 AM Post #15 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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That's why you want the computer to apply a set of rules, consistently and completely, across the whole document for you. |
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| JBryan | Jan 19 2011, 10:29 AM Post #16 |
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I am the grey one
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Any software routine that automatically inserts two spaces following a period would do the same for an abbreviation. |
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"Any man who would make an X rated movie should be forced to take his daughter to see it". - John Wayne There is a line we cross when we go from "I will believe it when I see it" to "I will see it when I believe it". Henry II: I marvel at you after all these years. Still like a democratic drawbridge: going down for everybody. Eleanor: At my age there's not much traffic anymore. From The Lion in Winter. | |
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| Axtremus | Jan 19 2011, 10:29 AM Post #17 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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The best thing is ... it doesn't really matter. The software will do the right thing either way.
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| KlavierBauer | Jan 19 2011, 10:30 AM Post #18 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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Ax: It's not out of your control, but it may be out of your control - that's my point. Depending on the context of your digital writing, you may, or may not, be able to add extra space. The <textarea> element here on the forum doesn't ( was wrong in my last post) - so even though the element itself will allow extra white space, it is being trimmed out here. Most likely as it's submitted to the db, it is "scrubbed" and "sanitized," removing any extra white space, and potentially harmful code. You're right, in that it is often out of your control, how many spaces will end up on the rendered page - but it is very inconsistent, and so isn't viable as a "best practice" for authoring. AL: Ax is saying it's out of your control for simple form submission via the web, as we see here in the forum. You can add in a bunch of white space, but it will disappear when you submit the form. Ax: AL is talking about standardized formats specific to the industry (SMF for example), where these rules still apply, where monospaced fonts are still used. Most modern computers have proportional fonts, rather than fixed-width, or monospaced fonts, so blogging layout is going to be very different than a monospaced font's layout in a manuscript. The software doesn't handle this consistently, since different software will treat this differently - it still becomes an issue of consistency. We might as well just learn to write without any spaces (think of the efficiency gained without use of the space bar), and let software put in all the spaces. Edited by KlavierBauer, Jan 19 2011, 10:38 AM.
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"I realize you want him to touch you all over and give you babies, but his handling of the PR side really did screw the pooch." - Ivory Thumper "He said sleepily: "Don't worry mom, my dick is like hot logs in the morning." - Apple | |
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| Aqua Letifer | Jan 19 2011, 10:34 AM Post #19 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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Got it in one. And how about periods followed by an apostrophe. Or quotation marks. Or parentheses. There aren't hard-and-fast rules for these cases, it's all contextual. Which is why software will never replace good habits. |
| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| ivorythumper | Jan 19 2011, 10:53 AM Post #20 |
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I am so adjective that I verb nouns!
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After writing I go into the replace function to cleanup doubles spaces. I prefer to read sentences with doubled spaces since it more defines the sentence from looking like a run-on paragraph. A lot of medieval manuscripts had no spacing between sentences, or even words, and some ancient Greek and other languages used boustrophedon which was writing each line noitcerid etisoppo eht ni txet eht fo so that the reading was continuous rehto eht ot tfihs ot gnivah tuohtiw side to continue reading. |
| The dogma lives loudly within me. | |
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| Qaanaaq-Liaaq | Jan 19 2011, 11:10 AM Post #21 |
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Senior Carp
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The rule I learned is two spaces after a period and a colon in a sentence. One space after a semicolon. Word processors may be causing confusion. Word processors use two types of fonts: fixed and proportional. Courier New and Lucida Console fonts use fixed width characters. All characters have the same width. The letters “i” and “M” and all other characters, numbers and special characters take up the same amount of spatial width. Arial is a proportional font. Each character takes up a different width including the period. So if a proportional font is used, there might really be two spaces after the period but it looks like one space. |
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| Axtremus | Jan 19 2011, 11:11 AM Post #22 |
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HOLY CARP!!!
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(responding to JBryan and Aqua's posts) Just because some of us can only imagine software following relatively simple rules and perform relatively simple operations doesn't mean software will only ever follow relatively simple rules and perform only relatively simple operations. 1. Nothing prevents of known abbreviations from being bundled with software and consulted with the routines that determine how much white space to leave after a period. 2. Where "context" can be codified (broadly agreed to and written as rules), it can be incorporated into software. Where it cannot, no one can definitively say which treatment of spacing is right and which is wrong -- software's output, in such cases, would be no more right and no more wrong than a human's. 3. In general, "habit" is the sort of thing that digital computers are very good at faking (or at least maintain the appearance of doing so). Specific to the habit of inputing one space or two after a period, computer software already renders it irrelevant in most cases. It may not have worked its way to SMF yet, but that's just a matter of time. |
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| Aqua Letifer | Jan 19 2011, 11:20 AM Post #23 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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You're not going to get them all, Ax, that's my point. Some may be specific only to a certain manuscript, chapter or paragraph.
All kinds of wrong. You assume that all rules of language can be coded, which is incorrect. Language isn't a complex series of boolean statements, it's a flexible, contextual and at times ambiguous form of communication and that's what you're missing. Many punctuation and grammar rules entirely depend upon the intent of the writer, and that's something software will never be able to simulate. What's happened with spelling and grammar errors since the invention of spell and grammar check? Have the number of errors in professional publications gone up or down? Up. By a hell of a lot.
Like I said. Write 20 pages of stuff yourself, run your scripts and send it to me. For a fee, I'll be more than happy to supply you with edits and nice big red marks where your software ****ed up. In all seriousness, at my old job we had a woman who got paid a salary to do precisely that. Because editing software is and will always be inferior to a human's language comprehension. |
| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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| The 89th Key | Jan 19 2011, 11:27 AM Post #24 |
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| Aqua Letifer | Jan 19 2011, 11:29 AM Post #25 |
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ZOOOOOM!
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Research Cat haz t3h rite attitudez! |
| I cite irreconcilable differences. | |
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10:57 AM Jul 11