Slashdot Mirror
Sentence Spacing — 1 Space or 2?
An anonymous reader noted an epic battle is waging, the likes of which has not been seen since we all agreed that tab indenting for code was properly two spaces. He writes "Do you hit the space bar two times between sentences, or only one? I admit, I'm from the typewriter age that hits it twice, but the article has pretty much convinced me to change. My final concern: how will my word processor know the difference between an abbr. and the end of a sentence (so it can stretch the sentence for me)? I don't use a capital letter for certain technical words (even when they start a sentence), making it both harder to programmatically detect a new sentence and more important to do so. What does the Slashdot community think?"
[Insert one thousand opinions here]
The only one that matters: Is it still readable?
We have bigger problems in the world than "one space or two" ... for example, people's atrocious speling.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It's a well-known fact that God uses 3-space tabs. I don't want to go to hell, so that's what I use, but your eternal soul is your own call, buddy.
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
I don't know what about an IBM model M and a selectric keyboard implies that there's any difference at all in how you use them. Standard typography has evolved to two spaces between sentences, PERIOD. This is not up for discussion, nor should it be. There's no significantly new information that implies that this should change, except that more and more people are freaking lazy, and language should not evolve because of laziness. Man up, hit that spacebar twice, and quit whining
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
Seriously, dude. We're starting to worry about you.
During the early area of the internet (around 1990) i held courses and taught new users, how to use the "blank" correctly. Rules were:
People who didn't followed the rule were convicted for excessive blanking.... at least here in germany.
CU, Martin
So I started reading this, thinking oh this sounds interesting to ponder. And then I got about halfway through the wiki entry and realized, ok no it's not. I learned with two spaces. Let me know when the discussion is done and I'll just do that.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
As Zombieland stated, Rule #2 is Double Tap. I think that makes the answer pretty clear.
Ask "Should I use spaces or tabs for newlines?"
3. Hang out and serf web.
4. Discussion settled? Ask "Should there be brackets around code even if there's only one line? Like this:
If( foo == true)
a=x;
Or is it:
If( foo = true)
{
a=x;
}
sit back and surf web for a few more hours.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Yes - but is it one bollock or two bollocks?
<posting target-moderation="funny">
<sentence tone="exclamation">silly boy</sentence>
<sentence>you <contraction>should not</contraction> be mixing content with layout</sentence>
<sentence>use an <acronym>extended markup language</acronym> schema that removes the ambiguity and allows the viewer to determine <alternative-list><item>his</item><item>her</item></alternative-list> preferred layout and punctuation <aside>or even see it presented in <abbrev>text message</abbrev>format allowing accessibility by teenage people</aside> </sentence>
</posting>
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
You forgot about the special case where you should use variable amounts of spaces, at random, to add to the horror that is is Comic Sans.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Find: ".__"
Replace "._"
Find morse code W and replace with morse code A? Ahy aould I aant to do that? (bad) fake british accent?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Not only that, they're so bad I can't even see the apostrophe in your sentence.
One of the many deficiencies of HTML.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Three is the number of the counting, and the counting of the number shall be three.
End of discussion.
Awesome.
Next topic: emacs or vi.
I am not a crackpot.
<paragraph>
<sentence>
<word>The</word>
<word>only</word>
<word>way</word>
<word>to</word>
<word>fix</word>
<word>this</word>
<word>is</word>
<word>with</word>
<word>XML</sentence>
<sentence>
<word>Totally</word>
<word>human</word>
<word>readable</sentence>
</paragraph>
Just set your slashdot comment setting to code. Then you can get two spaces with all their glory.
And you'll get monospaced characters also. Speaking of which, comments in code are monospaced. Are two spaces after a sentence more correct there? Personally, I think it looks too expanded.
"Why not zero spaces?" Seriously, there's this guy who works in another building on our campus.He uses zero spaces between sentences.Whenever I see email from him I get angry.It's gotten to the point where I'm thinking where his building is would make a nice meteor crater.I know that's not healthy thinking.Zero spaces after sentences is annoying as all get out.
I use four-tab spaces. ...and write *very* concise code, or it won't fit on the lines.
"Good news, everyone!"
we could simply write software to be intelligent enough to automatically add a space between sentences when it detects a period-space-word starting with a capital letter
Mr. John Smith
Ms. Jane Doe
Dr. Thomas
W. Main Street.
Tabs,shmabs;Spacing,shmacing;Readability is for losers!;Every C programmer knows this;Cheers;Me;Winner,Cryptic C Competition,1987;