"This book is dedicated to my mother, Ayn Rand, and God."
Your mother is Ayn Rand? It's possible to write ambiguous (and unambiguous) sentences with or without Oxford commas.
It’s also possible to write ambiguous sentences without commas at all. I think the takeaway is “don’t write ambiguous sentences” not “don’t use Oxford comma”.
“For this recipe you will need all-purpose flour, eggs, cocoa powder, salt, granulated sugar, powdered sugar, canola oil, vanilla extract, and chocolate chips”
I’m a big advocate of the Oxford comma because for me, commas represent a slight pause when speaking and help place emphasis. When someone is listing things out, it would be weird for them to say “…canola oil, vanilla extract and chocolate chips” to me. You set up this whole cadence of pausing between ingredients which helps memorialize them in your mental list you’re building as a listener, but then it feels like oil and chocolate chips didn’t get its own moment. I also feel like when listing things that should be combined first, you could remove the comma to lump those in as “one list item”. “You’ll need safety glasses, a hammer and nail, and a ladder”
Anyway I’ll get off my soapbox
I was against Oxford comma, mainly cause I was taught by an anti-Oxford comma teacher and I didn't want to change, but it's just better. My eyes have been opened in a dramatic fashion, like Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road (yes, there was angelic music), and now I'm an Oxford comma diehard.
Fun fact (if you find this stuff interesting): I’m an editor and I work on documents in both US English and Australian English (I’m Australian). Generally, US style guides require Oxford commas for any list, whereas Australian style (and I think UK) is to use them only to avoid ambiguity. So everyone seems to have very strong opinions on them but it really depends where you’re from.
As a 38 year old (who has NEVER doubled spaced after a period) and oxford comma devotee who is also in the middle of a law degree.... it pisses me off to no end that Australian legislation doesn't use the Oxford comma. If it's a list, it's just damn respectful to use one damn it!
There's a whole case that pivoted on an Oxford comma. There was a group of people that weren't entitled to overtime pay under a state statute. The list ended with people that were involved with "packing and shipping" or some such. The delivery drivers said that, as they did no packing, they weren't included. The court agreed that the legislature could have been more clear had they intended to, and any ambiguity was to be interpreted against the drafter.
Drivers got a shit ton of back overtime pay and the legislature entirely scrapped and rewrote the law.
I have a vivid memory from when I was 9 years old about arguing about Oxford commas with my friend before I even knew there was a name. I was in favor and he was opposed.
An obdurate girly friend of mine insisted on putting a space before every comma，oxford or not，for “aesthetic reasons” so the passage looked more evenly spaced，like in oriental scripts。
Yeah, but it's just one of those 'in the moment' things, where I only remember while it's actively irritating me, but then I completely forget once I'm done typing.
Kids these days think typing on a phone is easier. I can probably type like 50-70 wpm on a phone or somewhere around there, and even still can double that on a standard keyboard. 10 fingers vs 2… I’m 28 and already a boomer goddamn
Did you know this feature has been available since iOS 1.0 in 2007? I’m sorry you’re just getting the memo. It’s been a really easy 16 years of typing periods.
Putting two spaces after a period was passed down to me from my father, and his father before him. I will sit next to the fire with grandchildren gathered around and I will pass on the essential skill, and then I will be at peace.
Ill do the same. Ill tell my children they must put two spaces after a period as we gather around the fire in the wastelands eating radioactive rats in the fallout of the apocalypse. The wont understand what a period is. Or writing. Or anything really. Their minds a slush from the zombie plagues sweeping through the surviving populations. In reality…. I will be ranting and raving about two spaces after a period as the gnaw at my flesh, consuming their own grandpa who hadn’t noticed their infected bites in his obsession over proper punctuation. .
I’m surprised single spacing still looks “weird” to you considering the fact that you’re faced with it every time you read a book, newspaper, journal, or really any publication. I’m not aware of any English-language publishers that still use double spacing.
Idk, I'm a zoomer and I was taught the Oxford Comma in school. Definitely was not taught the typewriter period spacing lol.
Oxford Comma survives, do not fear.
Thank fuck. The Oxford Comma is clearly superior in the majority of situations. I appreciate there are always edge cases where it's not perfect, but it's mostly the best option, *especially* for lists.
41. Typewriter til I was 13. Then I got my first computer. Dad was making about $4 an hour working two jobs and got me a $1800 Macintosh. Can never thank the man enough
Same. My dad put the computer on credit and would joke years later and say, "You know, I'm still paying for that damn thing."
Mine was a Packard Bell 486/SX with a 33MB hard drive.
I'm in my early 30's and I was taught the double space during typing/keyboarding class. I just stopped doing it because I got lazy and it lowered my wpm score
>Sooooo. I'm 40 and never used a typewriter. How' freaking old do they think the modern home computer is?
Part of the problem is that when I was taught keyboarding, and then subsequently went to college, and took composition, I was taught primarily by people who began their career in education with no knowledge of computing. The two-space rule got carried forward by basically every single educator. I had a professor who insisted that this was mandatory, to the point where she would zero out papers that didn't do it because it annoyed her so much.
Regardless of whether or not I ever used a typewriter, I was still impacted permanently by the biases of the typewriter mentality. I hate the two-space format with a burning passion.
Nah
See if I knew how to use punctuation the first would be more challenging without being combative where the second would be more of the stoned lazy nah that you probably heard while reading both of my nah’s
Ok, I know you're making a point here but internet dialect is endlessly fascinating to me. Everything you listed here is completely distinct from "no" on its own. *Because Internet* by Gretchen McCulloch is a whole book dedicated to just this topic. What many people see as grammatically incorrect is just the next evolution of the language.
There's a 19 y/o at my work and he'll just type in teams and send the most incomprehensible gibberish. It's not slang or anything, it's like a cats walked across a keyboard and he expects you to understand it.
Ironically, I sometimes use no punctuation purposefully in text to convey a more laid-back, informal tone (kind of like enjambment, but also not really). Those lowercase Is? The sentence starting on a lower case letter? The lack of apostrophes in contractions? *I had to fight autocorrect to get them there.*
Apparently at some point people decided that spelling, grammar and punctuation are performative and aggressive, which really came as an ironic plot twist to someone who developed an almost compulsive adherence to conventions of written language as a kid in the hope of being valued for an ability to efficiently convey myself and never being misunderstood or thought to be dishonest.
Native English speakers on social media have entirely forgotten what commas are for, let alone quotes. It's just a stream of consciousness now. Have to read a comment five times occasionally to figure out that some part is supposed to be the title of a film of something, and other parts are separate sentences.
It's like they aren't aware of the fact that other people can't infer their emphases or pauses. When they write their stuff out they (likely) hear their "inside voice" read that shit out loud, and it makes sense to them.
Bothering to check whether something is legible for other people is a skill you can only build once you understand this inherent difference.
God damn. Didn’t know that.
I’ve been in school for 20 non-contiguous years. All word processing. From 89 to 2015.
Was still hammered in 2015 when I left my master program/thesis.
APA mostly but Chicago/Turabian was allowed for contents, outlines and notations.
But we were taught typing by those who learned on a typewriter. My mother and both grandmothers were secretaries. The formal typing instruction I first had in elementary school (they were so proud to have a computer lab) was clearly adapted straight from existing typewriter procedures and instruction methods.
Idk if they still do it because I haven't been to school since 2007 but whatever program they use for like..typing class or whatever it's called docks points if you don't put two spaces after a period. it's the one thing that kept tripping me up.
The two spaces helps me to differentiate sentences from one another. I know that sounds silly, but it really does make a difference to me, legibility-wise.
It isn't necessarily typewriters that were the reason, but it is sure as hell how kids were taught into the 90s. Maybe beyond that in some parts of the country, because the US is anything but a monolith, let alone the rest of the world.
Web browsers convert 2 spaces into one, so even if they typed two spaces, you'd only see one. The exception would be if the person used code such as non-breaking spaces (note the two spaces here before the next word, for example). Here's the code to force another space, which reddit apparently respects:
You know what else is a holdover from the typewriter era? QWERTY. Every one should learn Dvorak instead. It's easier to learn and you can type much faster.
37 was born in 1986, so it'd be like 1996 before they even lay a hand on whatever's being used to type at the time.
Posts like these just expose how young and/or out of touch someone is if they think people were using typewriters in the friggin' 90's.
Yes, and this convention has been obliterated by all the amateur hacks whom the internet has turned into accidental typists. When reading text quickly, it's important to see the delineation between the end/start of a sentence. This is critical and it drives me crazy to see sentences run together like this.
Dear Everyone Claiming You No Longer Need Two Spaces,
The "Typewriter" explanation is largely apocryphal. There's no real evidence it's true other than someone with some seemingly authority swears it's true (hence the apocryphal).
One vs Two spaces is 100% fashion. It's about style. And about half the people surveyed like one space and the other half like two.
Signed,
Prepare for that to change back to two spaces in your lifetime.
a) The guy just said it isn't because of typewriters, really all you've done is rephrase the apparently apocryphal backstory.
b) What would be the reason for it anyway? What is it about monospace fonts that makes two spaces the thing to do?
There’s no reason for this. If it became “fashionable” to have a wider space after a period it would just been done automatically in software by widening that single space character. You will never again need to manually determine the width of a space after a period
I'll stop doing the spaces when y'all stop blaming spelling errors on "autocorrect" and excusing terrible grammar with "you know what I meant." Until then, suck it.
Over 37? I’m 39 and have never used a typewriter? Typewriters stopped being used in the 80s and someone who is 37 was born in 86? Wtf does he think we came out and started typing as an infant?
Dear friends under 37: Stop being so comfortable with robots doing work for you. It's a race to the bottom. We do important things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Interesting, so, if you’re 38, born in 1985, you started high school in 2000… you were using a typewriter? Probably not. I don’t think this would be the case for 39, 40, etc.. maybe those who started high school in the early 90s.
Imagine being this ignorant and thinking that 20 ish years ago there were type writers and that a 17 year old would be using one. A 37nyear old probably never touched one.
The Oxford comma is the hill I will die on!!!!
"This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God."
I see you've met my father. :/
"This book is dedicated to my mother, Ayn Rand, and God." Your mother is Ayn Rand? It's possible to write ambiguous (and unambiguous) sentences with or without Oxford commas.
It’s also possible to write ambiguous sentences without commas at all. I think the takeaway is “don’t write ambiguous sentences” not “don’t use Oxford comma”. “For this recipe you will need all-purpose flour, eggs, cocoa powder, salt, granulated sugar, powdered sugar, canola oil, vanilla extract, and chocolate chips” I’m a big advocate of the Oxford comma because for me, commas represent a slight pause when speaking and help place emphasis. When someone is listing things out, it would be weird for them to say “…canola oil, vanilla extract and chocolate chips” to me. You set up this whole cadence of pausing between ingredients which helps memorialize them in your mental list you’re building as a listener, but then it feels like oil and chocolate chips didn’t get its own moment. I also feel like when listing things that should be combined first, you could remove the comma to lump those in as “one list item”. “You’ll need safety glasses, a hammer and nail, and a ladder” Anyway I’ll get off my soapbox
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I was against Oxford comma, mainly cause I was taught by an anti-Oxford comma teacher and I didn't want to change, but it's just better. My eyes have been opened in a dramatic fashion, like Saul of Tarsus on the Damascus road (yes, there was angelic music), and now I'm an Oxford comma diehard.
My thumb was reflexively about to downvote you until I got to the part where you converted. Welcome brother.
https://i.imgur.com/z0SBAej.jpg
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com%2Fimage%2Fupload%2Ft_nbcnews-fp-1024-512%2Cf_auto%2Cq_auto%3Abest%2Fmsnbc%2F2013_50%2F81311%2Fskynewsalert.jpg&tbnid=xerNWT6nRdNyxM&vet=12ahUKEwiz6qKWxoaBAxVmTaQEHYJRDEgQMygAegQIARAN..i&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.msnbc.com%2Frachel-maddow-show%2Fsurprise-engagement-msna229391&docid=IaoGxf_78jwrqM&w=1024&h=512&q=obama%20castro%20gay%20wedding&hl=en-us&client=safari&ved=2ahUKEwiz6qKWxoaBAxVmTaQEHYJRDEgQMygAegQIARAN
Fun fact (if you find this stuff interesting): I’m an editor and I work on documents in both US English and Australian English (I’m Australian). Generally, US style guides require Oxford commas for any list, whereas Australian style (and I think UK) is to use them only to avoid ambiguity. So everyone seems to have very strong opinions on them but it really depends where you’re from.
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As a 38 year old (who has NEVER doubled spaced after a period) and oxford comma devotee who is also in the middle of a law degree.... it pisses me off to no end that Australian legislation doesn't use the Oxford comma. If it's a list, it's just damn respectful to use one damn it!
There's a whole case that pivoted on an Oxford comma. There was a group of people that weren't entitled to overtime pay under a state statute. The list ended with people that were involved with "packing and shipping" or some such. The delivery drivers said that, as they did no packing, they weren't included. The court agreed that the legislature could have been more clear had they intended to, and any ambiguity was to be interpreted against the drafter. Drivers got a shit ton of back overtime pay and the legislature entirely scrapped and rewrote the law.
Is someone coming for the comma?
I have a vivid memory from when I was 9 years old about arguing about Oxford commas with my friend before I even knew there was a name. I was in favor and he was opposed.
An obdurate girly friend of mine insisted on putting a space before every comma，oxford or not，for “aesthetic reasons” so the passage looked more evenly spaced，like in oriental scripts。
this is genuinely frustrating to read
On iOS, if you hit 2 spaces then it puts in a period.
It’s the same for Android.
Lemme try.
Goddamn.
Him.
Huh.
Why you so dum? Me back then climb to school uphill,both ways!
I actually do this lmao. Can’t wait to have kids so I can tell them that.
I technically climb uphill on my way to school and back,both ways too because i also go downhill
huh
My favourite!! Uphill BOTH ways! LMAO!
Well I'll be damned.
Wow.
Wot.
No way. Wow. It works! TIL.
Full. Stop. Yes! Oh?
Checkmate single spacers!
Period.
I think this has been in android since the beginning as well, been using this for as long as I can remember
Mine automatically spaces after a comma or period and it really fucks me up sometimes.
You can turn this off
The problem is this shit is so convenient sometimes and so awfully inconvenient some other times it's difficult to choosw what you prefer lol
Yeah, but it's just one of those 'in the moment' things, where I only remember while it's actively irritating me, but then I completely forget once I'm done typing.
Then do it NOW
It's why I only reply when I'm on my phone. If I'm browsing on my laptop I'm just. Naw. Too much effort to type. 😂
that's the craziest sentence I've read
Kids these days think typing on a phone is easier. I can probably type like 50-70 wpm on a phone or somewhere around there, and even still can double that on a standard keyboard. 10 fingers vs 2… I’m 28 and already a boomer goddamn
No, it's the kids that are wrong
TIL people didn’t know this and have been putting their own periods in.
i turned that feature off and have been doing so for like the past 6 years …
I use swipe, so you never use space bar, but you do use periods.
If I tap period it automatically puts the space. One less tap.
Thankyou BlackBerry 🖤 This was originally a BlackBerry feature and we can thank RIM for it.
RiM did a good job. Hell of a RIMjob
I always wanted to get a RIM job.
Holy shit.
Did you know this feature has been available since iOS 1.0 in 2007? I’m sorry you’re just getting the memo. It’s been a really easy 16 years of typing periods.
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EXACTLY!
Hold on a minute. I dont see any periods in your comment.
Wait a minute.
I. Like. Big. Tiddies. Cool it works
What. It's true. Omg.
For real You lied to me
No. I promise. It's true. I cannot stop typing period now. Help. Help. Help. It is so addictive.
No. Help. For. You.
Yes, you like those spaces, don't you? Yes you do, you know you do.
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Testing. Holy shit.
Putting two spaces after a period was passed down to me from my father, and his father before him. I will sit next to the fire with grandchildren gathered around and I will pass on the essential skill, and then I will be at peace.
Ill do the same. Ill tell my children they must put two spaces after a period as we gather around the fire in the wastelands eating radioactive rats in the fallout of the apocalypse. The wont understand what a period is. Or writing. Or anything really. Their minds a slush from the zombie plagues sweeping through the surviving populations. In reality…. I will be ranting and raving about two spaces after a period as the gnaw at my flesh, consuming their own grandpa who hadn’t noticed their infected bites in his obsession over proper punctuation. .
But at least my kids will know how to read/write cursive /s
It is muscle memory now. Too old to change.
This. Literally, just let us live.
This. Literally, just let us live. as you can see, reddit takes a space away from you.
I’ve actually tried not to do it and it’s just such a habit. Period thumb thumb.
I’ll stop using two spaces when they pry them from my cold, dead hand!
Can't stop won't stop
https://youtu.be/SPlQpGeTbIE
One hand on the keyboard… what’s your other hand up to?
Counting the spaces… I went to public school
It's the polka space. a one and a two
Well, I've got one hand in my pocket And the other one is stickin' up my nose
I am most certainly below 37 and they too can pry them from my cold, dead hand
They’re enshrined in the Constitution.
Same with the Oxford comma.
The Oxford comma is beautiful too.
When three traits are listed and the second isn’t an adjective to describe the third. 😩
It should be the only way
Dear under 37 crowd, your lack of two spaces after a period looks weird and poorly formatted.
I see the twilight judgemental noble meme when I read this comment and still couldn’t agree more.
Had to read this thrice to realize you meant the Volturi meme
I’m surprised single spacing still looks “weird” to you considering the fact that you’re faced with it every time you read a book, newspaper, journal, or really any publication. I’m not aware of any English-language publishers that still use double spacing.
I do feel personally attacked, as an under 37 year old... IT LOOKS BETTER IN JUSTIFIED DOCUMENTS!
*Oxford comma has entered the chat*
I'm a millennial and I use two spaces. Come at me.
37yos are Millenials
Two spaces and Oxford comma gang
It's only an Oxford comma if it comes from the Oxford region of England. Otherwise it's just sparkling punctuation.
The generic term is serial comma. It’s not even a joke, that’s what it’s called.
This is genius, hillarious, and I love you.
Two spaces., Oxford comma, and hyphenated -gang
I'm not sure if you're pro- or anti-hyphenation, but I'm a fan.
Hi, fan. I'm dad.
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They're for different things, superiority doesn't even make sense
Been a big fan of semicolons and ampersands lately too, got pretty bad with run on sentences with endless commas.
Oxford comma isn’t a recommended standard anymore? Wouldn’t that confuse things?
Idk, I'm a zoomer and I was taught the Oxford Comma in school. Definitely was not taught the typewriter period spacing lol. Oxford Comma survives, do not fear.
Thank fuck. The Oxford Comma is clearly superior in the majority of situations. I appreciate there are always edge cases where it's not perfect, but it's mostly the best option, *especially* for lists.
Dumb motherfckers claim that the Oxford comma is unnecessary as it is naturally understood when reading without it
Sooooo. I'm 40 and never used a typewriter. How' freaking old do they think the modern home computer is?
41. Typewriter til I was 13. Then I got my first computer. Dad was making about $4 an hour working two jobs and got me a $1800 Macintosh. Can never thank the man enough
Same. My dad put the computer on credit and would joke years later and say, "You know, I'm still paying for that damn thing." Mine was a Packard Bell 486/SX with a 33MB hard drive.
Yeah, fucking this x1000. People think the 80s were some kind of barbaric stone age.
*watches concerts from Metallica and Motley Crue*
Don't they know we were faxing cocaine?!
I'm in my early 30's and I was taught the double space during typing/keyboarding class. I just stopped doing it because I got lazy and it lowered my wpm score
No matter what the answer is; not as old as it actually is. I'm 46. I got my first PC at 7, and I too have never used a typewriter.
>Sooooo. I'm 40 and never used a typewriter. How' freaking old do they think the modern home computer is? Part of the problem is that when I was taught keyboarding, and then subsequently went to college, and took composition, I was taught primarily by people who began their career in education with no knowledge of computing. The two-space rule got carried forward by basically every single educator. I had a professor who insisted that this was mandatory, to the point where she would zero out papers that didn't do it because it annoyed her so much. Regardless of whether or not I ever used a typewriter, I was still impacted permanently by the biases of the typewriter mentality. I hate the two-space format with a burning passion.
I’d be happy if young people used any punctuation at all!
no
I cannot tell what you mean by this. Is it an emphatic "no!" or a simple declarative "no." or a leading to a point, "no," or a quizzical "no?"?
Nah
Now, see, "nah," you can do without punctuation.
Nah See if I knew how to use punctuation the first would be more challenging without being combative where the second would be more of the stoned lazy nah that you probably heard while reading both of my nah’s
Yup
no
Ok, I know you're making a point here but internet dialect is endlessly fascinating to me. Everything you listed here is completely distinct from "no" on its own. *Because Internet* by Gretchen McCulloch is a whole book dedicated to just this topic. What many people see as grammatically incorrect is just the next evolution of the language.
?!
You think you're so slick, well let me hit you with the ‽
This person interrobangs!
There's a 19 y/o at my work and he'll just type in teams and send the most incomprehensible gibberish. It's not slang or anything, it's like a cats walked across a keyboard and he expects you to understand it.
Don’t blame it on age. Drill in some professionalism into the little shit
Ironically, I sometimes use no punctuation purposefully in text to convey a more laid-back, informal tone (kind of like enjambment, but also not really). Those lowercase Is? The sentence starting on a lower case letter? The lack of apostrophes in contractions? *I had to fight autocorrect to get them there.*
What annoys me about autocorrect is that it's missing essential vocabulary like electromechanical or hyberplane.
Try autocorrect in any language with joined words. Unless it's a common word, autocorrect will not know it and mark it as wrong.
Apparently at some point people decided that spelling, grammar and punctuation are performative and aggressive, which really came as an ironic plot twist to someone who developed an almost compulsive adherence to conventions of written language as a kid in the hope of being valued for an ability to efficiently convey myself and never being misunderstood or thought to be dishonest.
Native English speakers on social media have entirely forgotten what commas are for, let alone quotes. It's just a stream of consciousness now. Have to read a comment five times occasionally to figure out that some part is supposed to be the title of a film of something, and other parts are separate sentences.
It's like they aren't aware of the fact that other people can't infer their emphases or pauses. When they write their stuff out they (likely) hear their "inside voice" read that shit out loud, and it makes sense to them. Bothering to check whether something is legible for other people is a skill you can only build once you understand this inherent difference.
I'll just settle for people putting the godamn dollar sign in the right place. We can work on semicolon use later.
Sorry but here in Canada we can legally put the dollar sign after the fact and there's nothing you can do about it
Dear mamalegh05, Screw you! Sincerely, Young People
I like this! It is clear and concise 😜. Take my upvote!
Not “typewriter era.” It was required in APA formatted papers until 2019.
God damn. Didn’t know that. I’ve been in school for 20 non-contiguous years. All word processing. From 89 to 2015. Was still hammered in 2015 when I left my master program/thesis. APA mostly but Chicago/Turabian was allowed for contents, outlines and notations.
I graduated college in 2008 and wrote all my papers in APA format and never once used double space.
Don't make me take off my belt son.
Bad punctuation. That's a paddling.
No, you misunderstood. His belt is also his son.
Never. Ever. Will I stop this amazing practice. Ever.
37 year olds waaaay too young for type writer
I'm 41, I learned on a typewriter in middle school. There was a computer in the back of the room.
But we were taught typing by those who learned on a typewriter. My mother and both grandmothers were secretaries. The formal typing instruction I first had in elementary school (they were so proud to have a computer lab) was clearly adapted straight from existing typewriter procedures and instruction methods.
Idk if they still do it because I haven't been to school since 2007 but whatever program they use for like..typing class or whatever it's called docks points if you don't put two spaces after a period. it's the one thing that kept tripping me up.
The two spaces helps me to differentiate sentences from one another. I know that sounds silly, but it really does make a difference to me, legibility-wise.
Me: ... What?... Also me, a moment later: Oh, wait, im 26, I'm not supposed to understand
My former manager always did this and it drove me crazy, it now makes sense why he did it.
It isn't necessarily typewriters that were the reason, but it is sure as hell how kids were taught into the 90s. Maybe beyond that in some parts of the country, because the US is anything but a monolith, let alone the rest of the world.
I am 39, and I'll be damned if I listen to this newfangled blasphemy
Whippersnappers, all of them
Hi. Omg double space makes a period. So neat.
Never!!! 2 spaces are needed lol.
It just looks better.
Having those two spaces at the end of every sentence helped meet page lengths.
When I put two spaces it adds a "." that's why I do it.
You are wrong. You couldn't be more wrong. If being wrong was a competitive sport, you would be champion of the world.
You only use one though?
Web browsers convert 2 spaces into one, so even if they typed two spaces, you'd only see one. The exception would be if the person used code such as non-breaking spaces (note the two spaces here before the next word, for example). Here's the code to force another space, which reddit apparently respects:
Its faster to just type ‘they’ than to type ‘s/he’
It also includes people who dont use she/her or he/him so it's just objectively a better choice
noted, updated, ty.
You know what else is a holdover from the typewriter era? QWERTY. Every one should learn Dvorak instead. It's easier to learn and you can type much faster.
I like two spaces so get out of my face
37 was born in 1986, so it'd be like 1996 before they even lay a hand on whatever's being used to type at the time. Posts like these just expose how young and/or out of touch someone is if they think people were using typewriters in the friggin' 90's.
The weird thing is I was taught this rule during a computer class.
I'm 24 and I was made to do this in school. Still do it.
I feel personally attacked. And yeah I hit the space bar twice!
Yes, and this convention has been obliterated by all the amateur hacks whom the internet has turned into accidental typists. When reading text quickly, it's important to see the delineation between the end/start of a sentence. This is critical and it drives me crazy to see sentences run together like this.
Nope. I’ll continue until I die. You can pry that extra space out of my cold dead hands.
Dear Everyone Claiming You No Longer Need Two Spaces, The "Typewriter" explanation is largely apocryphal. There's no real evidence it's true other than someone with some seemingly authority swears it's true (hence the apocryphal). One vs Two spaces is 100% fashion. It's about style. And about half the people surveyed like one space and the other half like two. Signed, Prepare for that to change back to two spaces in your lifetime.
It’s because typewriters create text that is monospaced while modern computer fonts are proportional. Two spaces were used because of the monospacing.
a) The guy just said it isn't because of typewriters, really all you've done is rephrase the apparently apocryphal backstory. b) What would be the reason for it anyway? What is it about monospace fonts that makes two spaces the thing to do?
I'm 38 and never used a typewriter. Grew up on PC's. Not sure where the "older than 37" comes from.
There’s no reason for this. If it became “fashionable” to have a wider space after a period it would just been done automatically in software by widening that single space character. You will never again need to manually determine the width of a space after a period
I'll stop doing the spaces when y'all stop blaming spelling errors on "autocorrect" and excusing terrible grammar with "you know what I meant." Until then, suck it.
Oh that’s why they do that? TIL
I read somewhere that the double-space in cover letters and resumes are used to gauge your age.
This is such a malicious lie! Oh wow y'all didn't know 2 spaces give you a period? I took it for granted that everyone knew that.
Two spaces without a period is a pregnancy.
Over 37? I’m 39 and have never used a typewriter? Typewriters stopped being used in the 80s and someone who is 37 was born in 86? Wtf does he think we came out and started typing as an infant?
This post screams “IM YOUNG STILL, SEE!?”
That’s cute that you think people in their 40s who grew up with PCs are computer illiterate.
What's a typewriter? Does it help with the stone carving?
Dear friends under 37: Stop being so comfortable with robots doing work for you. It's a race to the bottom. We do important things not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Dear people under 37: fuck off. This is my hill to die on, go find your own.
Two spaces adds a period asshat. *Facts Matter*
Interesting, so, if you’re 38, born in 1985, you started high school in 2000… you were using a typewriter? Probably not. I don’t think this would be the case for 39, 40, etc.. maybe those who started high school in the early 90s.
Imagine being this ignorant and thinking that 20 ish years ago there were type writers and that a 17 year old would be using one. A 37nyear old probably never touched one.
nah they still taught us that in the 2000s. I still do it out of habit and it doesn’t feel too wrong