At my last job, a bunch of the older folks did not realize they had a “two spaces” habit.
It’s a clear tell.
Saw this meme and thought I’d point that out.
The amount of animosity over this issue is hysterical. Please continue.
I love how this implies that all of us in the over 40 crowd are desperately trying to avoid “tells” about our age.
“OH GOD PLEASE LET THEM THINK IM 28!!! I’LL NEVER DOUBLE SPACE AGAIN!!! NO CAP I’M THE FIRE GOAT!! BET.”
That’s gen z language. You should have called yourself the skibidi rizzler.
Rizz predates Gen Apoc by quite a few centuries.
I’d eat a bullet first
fr fr on god
Look boss! I have no useful experience but I will work a sub living wage.
The “two spaces” habit is because that was proper typing etiquette back in the day. You would lose points on on submitted papers if you didn’t do that. I still do th two spaces when typing on a computer but use a single space on my phone.
What’s funny is I finish my sentences with two spaces on my phone because that is the shortcut for a period and a space.
Yeah, I think this is more of an “over 50” thing. Someone who’s 40 today would have been born in 1984. That would have had them graduating high school in ~2002 - well into the computer age and not ever having to do anything on a typewriter.
I’m 38 and I do it despite knowing it annoys people. It’s just how I learned to type. Idgaf
The MLA guidelines didn’t change until 2019.
I’m 35 and I learned two spaces in school growing up :shrug:
Then later I learned it had changed so I stopped doing it. :double shrug:
Yea 39 checking in, that’s the way I was taught to type in school as well. I never broke the habit and still do double spaces after a full stop.
I’d honestly be more surprised that someone could tell enough to be bothered.
I can’t not notice it. It jumps out at me, the exact same as when someone does a non-three-dot ellipse.
I feel like the Monty Python priest with the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch
“Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out.”
The non three dot ellipse gets worse on some devices that replace the “…” (three individual dots) with ‘…’ (one symbol with three dots that have slightly different spacing to the three individual dots). “…” looks wrong but it’s worlds better than “….”.
31 here. I learned double first, and at some point it switched to single. I don’t remember when.
I’m mid 40s and was taught the double space practice, I guess it depends on when you first learned this stuff, it was very uneven teaching back then
Yeah, I think this is more of an “over 50” thing.
Someone born in 1976 is either 48 or 49 right now, which is well inside the “two spaces” era. So you’ve go a couple more years to clear these folks out before its an “over 50 thing”.
42 here and was taught the two space method in high school typing class but eventually retaught over to one space maybe 15 years ago.
I’m 47. Was definitely taught the two spaces thing. We still did it on word processors when they replaced typewriters.
I’m in the first half of my 40s. I was taught on typewriters in middle school and have been putting two spaces when using a physical keyboard ever since.
41, and I am one of those people as well. I had no idea it’s not something that should be done anymore. To celebrate, i only used 1 space in this post!
Two spaces was taught in school typing classes. An artifact of mechanical typewriters I expect but that is why us olds do it that way.
I don’t know if it’s just Samsung/Android, but when I do two spaces after a word on my phone, it actually adds a period.
Two spaces on the phone will put the period in for you on most keyboards. So there’s that.
Oddly enough, I’ve found that many of my younger coworkers can’t touch type. It makes sense that they won’t use two spaces if they never learned that muscle memory. It seems unlikely that someone who’s using the hunt and peck method would have that habit ingrained.
Some messaging services will crush whitespace, which can make it really fucking fun to communicate things like guitar tablature or Python code snippets. Either way you might type double spaces but it only saves singles. I typed this message with double spaces but Lemmy displays it single spaced.
I see double spaces between your sentences. Confirmed by copy/paste
I realize that I have a “two spaces” habit. I have no problem with it. I find the fact that you are so bothered by an extra space after the period to be bizarre.
Hey. Stop breaking the pattern
Only two? Why not six? It’s more.
I imagine because it’s larger than the space between words (one space), so as to indicate a break in thought, but not long enough to cause the reading to be stilted.
But if you’re ee cummings, go right ahead…
For that matter, why not zero? I put 2 spaces because it feels right.
You have a typo habit.
Sorry, what was the typo?
The extra space. It is an error.
According to the style guidelines you follow, maybe. But a “typo” is always a mistake, and my use of the double space after the period is very much an intentional stylistic choice.
I do this. I’m under 40. It looks nicer.
Too bad for you that HTML collapses all repeated whitespace, so double spacing after a period on the web does actual nothing.
Not true. Whitespace in html is broken. It works or doesn’t work based on inconsistent rules about what is considered “significant”.
"Typically, spaces which are visible to the user are referred to as significant, while spaces which are not rendered are considered insignificant. "
My Lemmy app, Thunder, shows all the spaces, sadly.
deleted by creator
It looks nicer on paper.
Looks like ass on a screen.
So you put a CR and a line space instead? Maybe I’ll start adding 3 spaces, to keep myself amused.
No, I just use one space. Fonts on screens look better with single spacing. Like this for example.
Double spacing looks weird. So much so that it is distracting. Look at this ridiculous spacing right here. Such large gaps.
Edit: example failed because the display changes it to single spacing. Maybe you haven’t noticed that your text doesn’t stay double spaced? Here’s a screenshot as a reference.
The CR and line space are what you did in the comment that I commented on. ;-) Spank ON!
Who legitimately cares about this?
I saw an analysis of the Cicada 3301 mystery which noticed a double space in the original final.jpg image to conclude it was probably written by an older and probably college educated American, as the practice is somewhat peculiar to Americans who took formal typing classes either in college before the 90’s or in high school after the 90’s.
This is something you probably want to care about when you’re producing text in some kind of professional capacity, for e.g. a newspaper, book, documentation, or something like that. You will need a manual of style to maintain consistency of the work across multiple authors. Using a single space is a universal rule in every typesetting/style manual I’ve ever seen, so it’s the correct choice in that case.
If you’re just out typing stuff in informal correspondence, as a hobby, or otherwise, I don’t really think you need to care.
Judging by the editorial standards I’ve seen from journalists recently (or lack thereof), I don’t think this is high on their list of concerns.
Editors and former editors. As the latter, I find it distracting and impossible not to notice.
Sounds like a “you” problem. I have no issue with it. IMO, wnatnig others to cofnorm to something becuz its a distraction to u speaks more about you’re shortcummings in adaptability and acceptance then it does aboot the author and there righting skillz. If too spaces after a period bothers you that much, I got some bad news bears about the younger generations…
Bud you can barely put a sentence together…
I just assumed it was forced enough that the /s wasn’t necessary…
You know, I thought this might be the case, but without the /s it’s a flip: is this person being very sarcastic, or are they very stupid?
There’s a lot of people who are very stupid, so that’s usually the assumption I revert to, when in doubt. I’m one that believes the /s is required for this reason.
In an age where headlines from The Onion are more believable than some actual headlines, omitting the /s was my bad.
If you fucking illiterate children are going to murder language with “u” and “ur”, I’ll put two spaces after the period, which is the right goddamn way to format anyway.
The double spaces is a holdout from the age of typewriters, where spaces were all the same size. Modern fonts (non-monospaced anyway) already have different spacing between words compared to the spacing after a period.
If “ur” and “u” don’t belong in normal communication, neither does two spaces after a period.
Monospaced font is great though.I agree however I don’t know how to do that in lemmy.
Lemmy uses markdown, so:
Testing a few things
｀is this monospace? ｀
Or ｀is this monospace? ｀
Or <code>is this monodpace? </code>
Or
is this monospaceI don’t object to you using this thread as a preview, but you might get better (or at least faster) results at something like:
testThanks very helpful
Putting two spaces after a period and using “u” and “ur” are not even on the same level. You can’t say one is the same as the other, using a letter to replace a word is next level. A double space can almost be missed honestly.
Imagine being so deprived as to grow upwithour a typewriter.
False equivalency.
You’re literally the one that brought it up.
Well… yah, fair enough.
Yep it looks and reads better than a single space.
Well said!
You know, that actually doesn’t bother me as much as some other things. Your never going to guess what truly bothers me more than the short hand of u and ur. At least with the u and ur they have taken everything out of it.You’re example seems to… Okay I was going to do a you’re and make it possessive in this sentence but my aneurysm can only last so long.
And I’m going to keep doing it. Fight me.
2 spaces? Bullshit, I put 1 tab.
Might wanna double it to be safe.
What’s the problem?
there isnt one
Lol teh oldz
What. A. Weird. Thing. To be annoyed. By.
Eye no rite?
yEAH.
Because it makes it easier to read so bite me.
Two spaces after a period was the way typography was taught and graded through the late nineties and maybe later. On a keyboard my thumb automatically double taps the space bar after a period. No thought, just reflex. On a phone, I never type a period. My keyboard app automatically inserts a period after a double space.
Someone above said that the standard didn’t change until 2019. I was never taught to double space after a period, but I went to poor schools with bad teachers.
No thanks, I want to improve the readability of my work.
Single spaces look odd to me, and yes, I’m in my 50s. But it does improve readability to me, breaks the thoughts apart just a bit. Not like we’re still indenting every paragraph!
Not like we’re still indenting every paragraph!
Wait, we’re not? I haven’t been in school for a long time so…
You don’t need to. We don’t use mono space font anymore. You can just read it normally.
Whoa there, some folks still do. They’re more accessible for dyslexic students, and also allow ASCII formatting for quick and easy questions creation on the fly.
I don’t know much about that. I know monospace is used when quoting lines of code. I’m talking about general academic and professional writing, and especially scholarly writing.
Academic/Scholarly monospace has long since fallen out of favour. It’s a shame really as it does render text less readable.
This is the first time I’m hearing about double spaces. For me it seems that it would have the opposite effect.
This is literally how you’re supposed to write. I ain’t throwing out the rules of English just because you didn’t learn it.
Supposed to according to whom? AP style, which is the standard for most English non-academic content, says one space. https://x.com/APStylebook/status/1254786139539427329
(Sorry for using Twitter as a source, but it’s straight from AP)
I don’t know why I love the sassiness in this reply. I’m 42 and I do it too.
It is not literally how you’re supposed to write. It’s an optional convention that has been increasingly falling out of favor over the decades.
The desired or correct sentence spacing is often debated, but most sources now state that an additional space is not necessary or desirable. From around 1950, single sentence spacing became standard in books, magazines, and newspapers, and the majority of style guides that use a Latin-derived alphabet as a language base now prescribe or recommend the use of a single space after the concluding punctuation of a sentence. However, some sources still state that additional spacing is correct or acceptable. Some people preferred double sentence spacing because that was how they were taught to type. The few direct studies conducted since 2002 have produced inconclusive results as to which convention is more readable.
It is, and the confusion surely stems from the internet wherein HTML renderers (all web browsers) automatically collapse multiple spaces into one. Don’t believe me? Every sentence in this post has two spaces in between.
This is literally how you’re supposed to write.
How do you hand write a double space?
Leave a slightly larger gap?
bark on em 👺
