{"id":46569,"date":"2014-08-20T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2014-08-20T17:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=46569"},"modified":"2014-08-20T07:39:46","modified_gmt":"2014-08-20T12:39:46","slug":"for-the-love-of-god-please-make-it-stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=46569","title":{"rendered":"For The Love Of God, Please Make It Stop"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in high school typing class, we learned – to the point of incorporating it into muscle memory, so we never actually thought about it – to type two spaces after a period.<\/p>\n

Every time.<\/p>\n

Sentences have endings. \u00a0When I put an ending on a sentence, I type two spaces. \u00a0It’s that simple. \u00a0I don’t even think about it. \u00a0Except now, naturally.<\/p>\n

Now, in about 35 years of typing, I can’t say that I’ve ever thought twice about it – with one exception. \u00a0Back when I worked as a technical writer, I noticed that most word processing and Desktop Publishing software automatically replaced my traditional double-space after a period with a single space.<\/p>\n

A single, extra-wide space. \u00a0To highlight the end of the sentence. \u00a0Sort of like we did on typewriters, only better.<\/p>\n

Oh, yeah -and now. \u00a0For the past year or two, it’s hard to go more than a few weeks without some major publication writing an article about how typing two spaces after a period is “completely, inarguably wrong<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

This time, it’s Farhad Manjoo:<\/p>\n

You’d expect, for instance, that anyone savvy enough to read Slate would know the proper rules of typing, [Hah! \u00a0– Ed.<\/span>] but you’d be wrong; every third email I get from readers includes the two-space error. (In editing letters for “Dear Farhad,” my occasional tech-advice column, I’ve removed enough extra spaces to fill my forthcoming volume of melancholy epic poetry, The Emptiness Within.) The public relations profession is similarly ignorant; I’ve received press releases and correspondence from the biggest companies in the world that are riddled with extra spaces.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Might I suggest purchasing one of the many fine apps that handle the typography for you…<\/p>\n

…and getting a hobby?<\/p>\n

And never, ever writing about this subject again?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in high school typing class, we learned – to the point of incorporating it into muscle memory, so we never actually thought about it – to type two spaces after a period. Every time. Sentences have endings. \u00a0When I put an ending on a sentence, I type two spaces. \u00a0It’s that simple. \u00a0I don’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geekery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46569"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46571,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46569\/revisions\/46571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}