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Post by Trevor on Dec 31, 2018 17:43:27 GMT
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Post by Dave Miller on Dec 31, 2018 19:55:46 GMT
A slight exaggeration. I haven’t died yet!
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Post by Verbivore on Dec 31, 2018 20:53:22 GMT
A happy new year to all! (In Oz it's already past breakfast-time on 01/01/2019 as I write.)
There are far too many Roy Hobbses still living, I can assure you.
My first emendment to any document I receive for proofing / editing is to remove the (many!) multiple spaces after terminal punctuation. Not only must I run search-and-replace with two space-bar strokes in the Find field but there are always other double spaces that are generated by different applications, and I must manually select the first of those, place it in the Find field, and repeat the S&R until all have been eliminated. There are at least five different kinds of space (and I'm not referring to non-breaking, half, thin, en, em … types that one might deliberately employ) that parade as "normal" spaces, but I've never figured out their origins other than to blame various wordprocessor applications for their presence.
In pre-computer-typesetting times, the double space following a period was standard practice; however, with computer-based page-layout programs (and even wordprocessors) and their automatic kerning / alignment / justification, the double spaces are not only unnecessary but a downright nuisance: they make the page ugly.
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Post by Dave Miller on Dec 31, 2018 23:42:06 GMT
I feel quite the opposite. I “grew up” on typed documents with a double space after a full stop and found it noticeably more difficult to read a text with just the one space.
I suppose that it’s difficult at speed, or in small text, to spot the difference between a comma and a full stop; when used to the double space, I’d use that spacing itself as a bigger clue and therefore stumble over all the running commas which seemed to be there.
When the university where I worked introduced a house style with single spacing, I hated it for several months. Gradually, I re-learned to read in the new style and no longer stumble. I still type that way, though!
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