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.
For those of you as stunned as I am that Word now marks two spaces as an error, there’s how to fix it courtesy of Microsoft Answers
Although current convention is to use just one space when using proportional fonts (two spaces were used in typing because most typewriter fonts were monospaced), you can select which convention you want to use and have Word flag exceptions (or not). At File | Options | Proofing, beside “Grammar and Refinements,” click Settings… In the Grammar Settings dialog, scroll down to Punctuation Conventions. You’ll see that you can select one or two space or “don’t check.” As to why this just started, probably no one can tell you, but this is how to fix it.
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
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:
31 here. I learned double first, and at some point it switched to single. I don’t remember when.
The MLA guidelines didn’t change until 2019.
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 on the phone will put the period in for you on most keyboards. So there’s that.
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.
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
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
Imagine being so deprived as to grow upwithour a typewriter.
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.
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.
I use two spaces and you are all “no cap fr fr skibidi Ohio fam.”
Fuck off.
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.
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.
Hey. Stop breaking the pattern
If this is bugging you you deserve to be annoyed._ You’re looking for reasons to be miserable._. You’re doing it to yourself. _ You give your power away to easily.
Too
I think your rite. OP shouldn’t of let themself get so bothered.
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.
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!
deleted by creator
I will not stop. And whining about it will make me double down.
4 spaces after a period?
Double it!
8 spaces?
16 TABS
I’m over 40. I do what I want.
Who legitimately cares about this?
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.
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.
Very interesting. I hadn’t noticed that before. Something to consider. I’ll keep an eye out for that. /s
You missed a space after your final period
ur not asposta do it afta da last purriod
Just use lots of lube, you’ll be fine
👏 top class dad joke, cheers from a dad
What. A. Weird. Thing. To be annoyed. By.
Eye no rite?
yEAH.
Imagine publically outing yourself as an agist POS with impulse control issues and an inability to rank issues worth talking about in any kind of sane manner.
And I’m going to keep doing it. Fight me.
