Post by: Little Joe on February 13, 2022, 01:06:37 PM
Post by: nddons on February 13, 2022, 01:08:27 PM
Sent from my iPad . Squirrel!!
Post by: Rush on February 13, 2022, 01:13:48 PM
Quote
Microsoft Word flags a double space as an error.
https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-many-spaces-after-a-period#6-style-guides-that-recommend-a-single-space
Microsoft is evil.
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on February 13, 2022, 01:54:22 PM
If I remember correctly, the original double space thing was from the days of the typewriter.
Post by: bflynn on February 13, 2022, 02:18:46 PM
Post by: Rush on February 13, 2022, 02:25:44 PM
It’s a readability thing. because the younger generation says you don’t need capital letters either. so they think it’s ok that the only way to catch a sentence break is by a little tiny dot. it’s not wonder they’re so messed up
I find myself doing it both ways and usually defaulting back to two spaces because I've always done it that way, and it looks more normal to me.
Post by: Username on February 13, 2022, 03:18:30 PM
Post by: Little Joe on February 13, 2022, 03:21:14 PM
That changed quite some time ago... or more accurately, it become acceptable to do it either way.I heard about it about a year ago. But what brought it to mind was an article in the paper with suggestions about how to get your letter to the editor published. Along with the standard stuff, they said "And absolutely, do not follow your period with two spaces. That drives the editors crazy". (I put quotes on that, but it was really just from memory and may have been stated differently).
If I remember correctly, the original double space thing was from the days of the typewriter.
I still put two spaces at the end of a sentence on my i-things because Apple interprets it as the end of a sentence and inserts the period for me.
(But I just checked, and it does put in the period, but it only puts in one space even though I typed two spaces.
Post by: Little Joe on February 13, 2022, 03:22:05 PM
Two spaces after the period always. And a comma before the "and" in a list of three or more things. Like this, that, and the other thing. I'll NEVER change. No matter what Foochi says.Thank you.
(But who is Foochi)?
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on February 13, 2022, 03:26:10 PM
Along with the standard stuff, they said "And absolutely, do not follow your period with two spaces. That drives the editors crazy".
Maybe that's why I haven't had anything published in quite some time.
It's a conspiracy I tell ya
Post by: Little Joe on February 13, 2022, 03:38:00 PM
Either that, or your letters don't conform to their agenda.
Maybe that's why I haven't had anything published in quite some time.
It's a conspiracy I tell ya
Either way, it's a conspiracy.
For some reason, all the people that write in to our paper defending our Governor DeSantis and/or Trump and/or anything of a conservative nature is full of bad grammar and misstatements of fact. Some would think that means conservatives are stupid rednecks. But I know for a fact that many excellent letters of a conservative nature don't get published. (They didn't mention that fact).
Post by: Jim Logajan on February 13, 2022, 03:53:28 PM
Post by: Username on February 13, 2022, 04:00:54 PM
Thank you.Lord High and Mighty Dr. Foochi who must be obeyed without question in all things.
(But who is Foochi)?
Post by: Little Joe on February 13, 2022, 05:57:45 PM
Lord High and Mighty Dr. Foochi who must be obeyed without question in all things.Oh, that Fookin Foochi.
Post by: nddons on February 13, 2022, 06:05:39 PM
I heard about it about a year ago. But what brought it to mind was an article in the paper with suggestions about how to get your letter to the editor published. Along with the standard stuff, they said "And absolutely, do not follow your period with two spaces. That drives the editors crazy". (I put quotes on that, but it was really just from memory and may have been stated differently).I did that too after this thread started and noticed that. Fucking CCP.
I still put two spaces at the end of a sentence on my i-things because Apple interprets it as the end of a sentence and inserts the period for me.
(But I just checked, and it does put in the period, but it only puts in one space even though I typed two spaces.
Post by: bflynn on February 14, 2022, 08:16:13 AM
Post by: nddons on February 14, 2022, 08:45:39 AM
Wow, that has to suck for millennials. If I see one space after a sentence on a resume, I skip it.The lack of capitalization and punctuation drives me fucking nuts. These lazy fucking young people are no EE Cummings or James Joyce. They are just lazy fucks and think the reader will understand what they are saying. I don’t even try. I move on. The informal communication devices like texting and even emails have make this problem much worse.
Post by: texasag93 on February 14, 2022, 09:03:51 AM
My 16 year old son asks why I always do it.
I understand why kids do it, but I stress to him to never do it in a professional setting.
Post by: TimRB on February 14, 2022, 09:05:25 AM
The lack of capitalization and punctuation drives me fucking nuts.
I'm with you. If I see a post in a forum with no capitals I just skip it, and, depending on the forum, add the writer to my ignore list. Like most here, I was taught to double-space; I can't even imagine why it would occur to someone to change that rule. I think there is another new rule, probably unwritten: all memes must contain at least one spelling, grammatical, or punctuation error. I can't count the number of memes I've seen, otherwise pretty clever, that were ruined (to me) by a glaring mistake.
Tim
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on February 14, 2022, 09:33:45 AM
I'm with you. If I see a post in a forum with no capitals I just skip it, and, depending on the forum, add the writer to my ignore list. Like most here, I was taught to double-space; I can't even imagine why it would occur to someone to change that rule. I think there is another new rule, probably unwritten: all memes must contain at least one spelling, grammatical, or punctuation error. I can't count the number of memes I've seen, otherwise pretty clever, that were ruined (to me) by a glaring mistake.
Tim
I worked with a guy at a defense contractor who was an English major but was now an engineer. The errors in technical document drove him nuts. He and I had a running friendly interchange where I would try to find grammatical errors in his documents. I think I only caught him once, maybe twice, over the course of several years and thousands of pages of documents.
"was now"... heh heh heh
Post by: Rush on February 14, 2022, 09:55:39 AM
The lack of capitalization and punctuation drives me fucking nuts. These lazy fucking young people are no EE Cummings or James Joyce. They are just lazy fucks and think the reader will understand what they are saying. I don’t even try. I move on. The informal communication devices like texting and even emails have make this problem much worse.
For me it started with gaming. If you don't have vent (audio) with online team players then all communication is in the text chat box and you're having to type it out while fighting so you resort to extreme shortcuts for expediency. You don't bother with caps or punctuation and you have lots of abbreviations like "u" for "you". I very quickly got used to it even though in normal life I'm very conventionally literate.
In gaming it is analogous to stenography; shorthand like court reporters use. You compress the written language because of time pressure, and space; you only have a small chat window in your field of view. Everything else is monsters and players and environment. I don't know if gaming was the original reason for typing this way and it migrated to phone texts or if texting that way arose separately. If so there must be similar reasons. It's not as easy to do punctuation and caps with fat fingers on a tiny touchpad as it is on a huge keyboard.
But it is completely inappropriate for any professional setting, or forum. It's actually offensive to use it outside of the narrow situations of gaming or texting intimate friends and family. Anywhere else, formal correct language should be used.
Post by: nddons on February 14, 2022, 10:01:33 AM
I'm with you. If I see a post in a forum with no capitals I just skip it, and, depending on the forum, add the writer to my ignore list. Like most here, I was taught to double-space; I can't even imagine why it would occur to someone to change that rule. I think there is another new rule, probably unwritten: all memes must contain at least one spelling, grammatical, or punctuation error. I can't count the number of memes I've seen, otherwise pretty clever, that were ruined (to me) by a glaring mistake.I totally agree. There are some genuinely funny memes that I would love to forward to a few friends, but doing so would make me look stupid.
Tim
Post by: nddons on February 14, 2022, 10:55:03 AM
For me it started with gaming. If you don't have vent (audio) with online team players then all communication is in the text chat box and you're having to type it out while fighting so you resort to extreme shortcuts for expediency. You don't bother with caps or punctuation and you have lots of abbreviations like "u" for "you". I very quickly got used to it even though in normal life I'm very conventionally literate.For those of us (known as the rest of the world) not into gaming, gaming speak may as well be written in NOTAM or METAR speak. Your writing sure doesn’t reflect that, Rush.
In gaming it is analogous to stenography; shorthand like court reporters use. You compress the written language because of time pressure, and space; you only have a small chat window in your field of view. Everything else is monsters and players and environment. I don't know if gaming was the original reason for typing this way and it migrated to phone texts or if texting that way arose separately. If so there must be similar reasons. It's not as easy to do punctuation and caps with fat fingers on a tiny touchpad as it is on a huge keyboard.
But it is completely inappropriate for any professional setting, or forum. It's actually offensive to use it outside of the narrow situations of gaming or texting intimate friends and family. Anywhere else, formal correct language should be used.
I hate myopic people who think we need to adapt to their way of thinking, whether that’s grammar and spelling, saying whether someone is a man or a woman, or that we have to break convention with 2,000 years of pronoun usage.
Post by: Rush on February 14, 2022, 10:57:56 AM
I totally agree. There are some genuinely funny memes that I would love to forward to a few friends, but doing so would make me look stupid.
Also agree but what really gets me is news articles. There are unforgivable grammar and spelling mistakes, or obvious autocorrects, no humans ever seem to proofread anymore. It's atrocious. It's vs its for example. Always autocorrected to it's but if you're using possessive that's WRONG. And yes I'm shouting.
Post by: Little Joe on February 14, 2022, 11:15:27 AM
Also agree but what really gets me is news articles. There are unforgivable grammar and spelling mistakes, or obvious autocorrects, no humans ever seem to proofread anymore. It's atrocious. It's vs its for example. Always autocorrected to it's but if you're using possessive that's WRONG. And yes I'm shouting.A friend of mine that works at the local news paper has often expressed his regrets that review editors were some of the first people cut to pare expenses. Each remaining review editor is given about 20% of the time he used to have to spend on each article. Many articles are forced to be published with no review, expecting the author to edit his own, with help from an auto-correct program
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on February 14, 2022, 11:20:29 AM
Also agree but what really gets me is news articles. There are unforgivable grammar and spelling mistakes, or obvious autocorrects, no humans ever seem to proofread anymore. It's atrocious. It's vs its for example. Always autocorrected to it's but if you're using possessive that's WRONG. And yes I'm shouting.
It's "vs.", not "vs"
:-)
Post by: Rush on February 14, 2022, 11:40:10 AM
It's "vs.", not "vs"
:-)
Not in British English. ;D
Post by: TimRB on February 14, 2022, 11:54:01 AM
A friend of mine that works at the local news paper has often expressed his regrets that review editors were some of the first people cut to pare expenses.
Being on the coast, our local paper often has articles on nautical issues, local fishing conditions, and the like. One time there was an above-the-fold front page headline about a local sailor who was going to "Circumvent the Earth". Even I gave them some gas over that one.
I worked with a guy at a defense contractor who was an English major but was now an engineer. The errors in technical document drove him nuts.
Years ago when I worked at IBM we had an internal network (virtual machine) on which there were forums, much like today's internet forums. One forum, called "nitpick forum" was for people to post examples of official IBM writings that contained grammatical or usage errors. The poster was supposed to post the example and then point out the required correction. One rule for the forum, though, (NOT unwritten) was that the poster himself was expected to use perfect English in his post, and if he made a mistake, he became fair game. I learned quite a lot there, actually. To this day I try hard to write correctly, even in forum posting. Sometimes a clunker gets through, but it's not through lack of effort.
Tim
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on February 14, 2022, 12:06:35 PM
Being on the coast, our local paper often has articles on nautical issues, local fishing conditions, and the like. One time there was an above-the-fold front page headline about a local sailor who was going to "Circumvent the Earth". Even I gave them some gas over that one.
Years ago when I worked at IBM we had an internal network (virtual machine) on which there were forums, much like today's internet forums. One forum, called "nitpick forum" was for people to post examples of official IBM writings that contained grammatical or usage errors. The poster was supposed to post the example and then point out the required correction. One rule for the forum, though, (NOT unwritten) was that the poster himself was expected to use perfect English in his post, and if he made a mistake, he became fair game. I learned quite a lot there, actually. To this day I try hard to write correctly, even in forum posting. Sometimes a clunker gets through, but it's not through lack of effort.
Tim
Years ago, the editorial production department (of a company that shall remain nameless) would publish a weekly yellow sheet of abstracts of new reports/articles/whatever. One time there was an abstract of a report documenting the services of the editorial department. It had over a dozen typos.
Post by: President in Exile YOLT on February 14, 2022, 12:15:12 PM
Post by: Becky (My pronouns are Assigned/By/God) on February 14, 2022, 12:20:22 PM
My very fave was when my folks’ hometown paper covered a celebration for a woman who invested much of her time and energy to helping out with high school sports. The headline: “Colville Honors One of its Finest Athletic Supporters.”
Another good one in our local paper was “Hunter in Better Condition After Being Shot.”
Post by: Becky (My pronouns are Assigned/By/God) on February 14, 2022, 12:26:30 PM
Being on the coast, our local paper often has articles on nautical issues, local fishing conditions, and the like. One time there was an above-the-fold front page headline about a local sailor who was going to "Circumvent the Earth"Even I gave them some gas over that one.I saw on one of those lists of gems discovered in student essays: “Magellan Circumcised the Earth with a 50-Foot Clipper.”
Years ago when I worked at IBM we had an internal network (virtual machine) on which there were forums, much like today's internet forums. One forum, called "nitpick forum" was for people to post examples of official IBM writings that contained grammatical or usage errors. The poster was supposed to post the example and then point out the required correction. One rule for the forum, though, (NOT unwritten) was that the poster himself was expected to use perfect English in his post, and if he made a mistake, he became fair game. I learned quite a lot there, actually. To this day I try hard to write correctly, even in forum posting. Sometimes a clunker gets through, but it's not through lack of effort.
Tim
Post by: President-Elect Bob Noel on February 14, 2022, 12:30:39 PM
Not in British English. ;D
two countries separated by a common language.