[Cialug] Nakamoto: Double Spacer

Matt Stanton matt at itwannabe.com
Thu Mar 6 14:43:24 CST 2014


I was born in 1980, and I was taught the same.  As a matter of fact, every time I edit my posts on a forum, I find myself somewhat ticked off when I see all the text I wrote stripped of sentence-ending double-space thanks to HTML's (and therefore, the posting software's) practice of reducing all forms of consecutive white space to a single space.  I like email, since it generally displays the text as it was written -- other than the forced line-wrap.

While I have used a typewriter (though not really for anything other than as a toy), I learned to type completely on the computer.  As kids, my siblings and I had access to a couple of ancient manual typewriters, and my mom used to have a nice electric typewriter in an almost suitcase-like plastic shell (that we kids weren't allowed to mess with).  In the end, though, I didn't learn to use the "home keys" until I started chatting on IRC, where I found that hunting and pecking would cause you to miss 90% of the conversation.

Maybe I'm just weird, though.  I'm one of the few people who actually attempt to properly punctuate on IRC, and I sometimes even properly capitalize the beginnings of sentences (I always capitalize "I", regardless of how lazily I am typing).  Double-spacing likewise follows me to IRC.

-- Matt (N0BOX)

Sent from my ASUS Transformer

-----Original Message-----
From: Nathan Stien <nathanism at gmail.com>
To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group <cialug at cialug.org>
Sent: Thu, 06 Mar 2014 12:16 PM
Subject: Re: [Cialug] Nakamoto: Double Spacer

I was born in 1981, and I was taught to double space after a period
sometime in the early 90s, using GUI word processors.  I have never used a
typewriter.

While I know the trend has gone against double spacing, my programmer-brain
always liked that it resolves the ambiguity between periods that are part
of abbreviations and those that end a sentence.
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