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Two spaces were adopted with monospace-font typewriters as the most convenient (or, in practice, only possible) way to get a wider space after the end of a sentence.

In other words, it's something you do instead of what you should do: use a wider space.

With proportional fonts and intelligent typesetting computers, there's no reason why the computer shouldn't just automatically create a wider space. But if it does that AND you have a second space, the result is a too-wide space.

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28 minutes ago, Don Edwards said:

Two spaces were adopted with monospace-font typewriters as the most convenient (or, in practice, only possible) way to get a wider space after the end of a sentence.

In other words, it's something you do instead of what you should do: use a wider space.

With proportional fonts and intelligent typesetting computers, there's no reason why the computer shouldn't just automatically create a wider space. But if it does that AND you have a second space, the result is a too-wide space.

Not if you are using a real typesetting program it doesn't.  I do all my serious work in a vim, feeding into latex, which does a just a fine job of making sure I have an em space after a full stop.  It's only those "What you see is all you get" programs that give your results.  And of course the reason why typewriters use 2 spaces is because the space after a full stop is supposed to be larger than the other spaces in the document.

 

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Writing in HTML, one would use   for an en space and   for an em space. Either way, they both tend to be larger than regular word-spaces.

I guess a more convenient way of inputting en and em quads may, if not exactly re-standardise the practice of greater spacing, maybe make it more generally feasible to use the proper Unicode codepoints for the larger spaces, rather than just using two plain spaces. But whatever…

Edited by HarJIT
remove lengthy blockquote when context already clear

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@The Old Hack :

Quote

*with the added weight to the frame, The Old Zeppelin starts to gently descend at a rate of two hundred feet a minute. Twenty minutes later, it makes contact with the ground and safety vents jettison the helium. The Old Hack sits up and mutters, "Okay, that's the last time I have lobster habañero with ghost peppers for dinner before I sleep."*

Extremely sorry, but I had to put this here—it's a pet peeve of mine.

There is no tilde in the word habanero. From Dictionary.com:

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/habanero

Wikipedia calls the tilde "a hyperforeignism patterned after jalapeño."

My apologies for the rant.

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1 minute ago, ProfessorTomoe said:

@The Old Hack :

Extremely sorry, but I had to put this here—it's a pet peeve of mine.

There is no tilde in the word habanero. From Dictionary.com:

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/habanero

Wikipedia calls the tilde "a hyperforeignism patterned after jalapeño."

My apologies for the rant.

Fixed, and my apologies.

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That reminds me of one of the Achievement Hunter's Let's Plays. They were playing Quiplash, where you have to answer questions they give you and hope it's funnier than the other guy's answer. 

One question they got was "What is the most annoying way to spell Mississippi?"

One of them (I think Ryan) answered "Correctly".

(the answer Jeremy gave won't get past the site's censors. suffice to say, it involves seeing people next Tuesday)

Me, I don't know if it's funnier to interpret that as spelling Mississippi correctly, or spelling Mississippi C-O-R-R-E-C-T-L-Y. 

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The person that was supposed to be my editor has more or less flaked out on me, so I'm in the market for an editor.  This is a for pay position, if not that much.  Ideal candidate knows LaTex, but failing that can edit a .docx file.  A knowledge of table top role playing games in not really needed, but might be nice.

Actually I will not know if she has flaked until Monday or so, but given her past history, she's flaked.

If you think you might be interested in this, email me j.michael.looney@gmail.com

Thanks

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19 hours ago, mlooney said:

The person that was supposed to be my editor has more or less flaked out on me, so I'm in the market for an editor

She contacted me today.  Swears that she will make my deadline.   I'll let y'all know if I really am in the market for an editor some time next week

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I got a comment on my Powers story. Man, is it a wall of text. Very few capitals, next to no punctuation, and no paragraph breaks. 

I still read it through, parsing it in Notepad and doing some touch-ups. I wanted to reply and not look like the Wall of Poorly-Punctuated Text scared me off. 

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1 hour ago, Zorua said:

I got a comment on my Powers story. Man, is it a wall of text. Very few capitals, next to no punctuation, and no paragraph breaks.

Back some time in the Jurassic, I wrote a few Harry Potter fanfics. Most of the  comments I got were from people who could communicate in written English. Some were not.

The latter category often provided interesting puzzles. I never did figure out a few of them.

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In the first place, it's effectively a mnemonic, not a binding rule, has a number of exceptions, tends to invert if it's not supposed to sound like the vowel in "tree", and this generally goes to indicate how unnecessarily complicated English orthography is.

 

Example of sounds to letters more regularly (egzampŭl ov saundz tu letŭrz mor regyularli), using a breve mark for pool->pull, bean->bin, bot->but (yuzĭng a briv mark for pul->pŭl, bin->bĭn, bot->bŏt): Ĭn dhŭ fŭrst pleis, ĭt'z a efektĭvli a nemonĭk, not a baindĭng rul, haz a nŏmbŭr ov eksepshŭnz, tendz tu ĭnvŭrt ĭf ĭt'z not sŭpŏust tu saund laik dhe vaul ĭn "tri", and dhĭs jen'rali gŏuz tu ĭndĭkeit hau ŏn-neseserĭli komplĭkeitĭd Ĭnglĭsh orthografi ĭz.

Edited by HarJIT
"...orthography ease"? Fixed. Can anyone spot any other mistakes?

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"I before E, except after C" ...unless you're planning a feisty heist on your weird beige foreign neighbor. 

Also, 'read' and 'lead' rhyme, and so do 'read' and 'lead'. But 'read' doesn't rhyme with 'lead', nor does 'read' with 'lead'.

And "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a valid sentence. And don't even get me started on the entirely valid (if wordy) sentence that contains the word 'and' about twenty-three consecutive times. 

English is weird. 

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The version I learned was, "I before E, except after C, or when sounded like 'a', as in "neighbor" and "weigh."  It then went on to list about eight exceptions to the extended rule.

Am I the only one who remembers a Charlie Brown show where Charlie Brown is in the finals of the National Spelling Bee, or some fictional equivalent?

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2 hours ago, CritterKeeper said:

The version I learned was, "I before E, except after C, or when sounded like 'a', as in "neighbor" and "weigh."  It then went on to list about eight exceptions to the extended rule.

Am I the only one who remembers a Charlie Brown show where Charlie Brown is in the finals of the National Spelling Bee, or some fictional equivalent?

I vaguely remember something like this, although I think it was just the school spelling bee.

You want frustration? Try this: I was a whiz at spelling bee contests through my eighth grade year (ending in 1977). I beat the entire 5th grade class in an impromptu contest the teachers held once. I didn't know about the Scripps contest until 1976, when my eighth grade English teacher announced it in class one day. I wound up winning the contest for my school and earned the right to compete in the area contest.

I got knocked out in the lousy first round. The word was "aggravate." I blanked out on it. Wound up using an "i" in place of the second "a." Insert "D'oh!" here, way before the Simpsons ever used it. :(

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9 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

He lost in the New York City finals when he misspelled "Beagle".

Yeah, that's kind of a Charlie Brown way to lose.

How the heck else did he spell it?  Beegle?  Beagel?

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21 hours ago, Scotty said:

Susan wasn't awakened back when we saw her interactions with Jeremy. And it seems like Jeremy left her alone whenever she was at Tedd's in relation to the review show (when her and Elliot were researching how they should do the show as well as showing off the episodes to the others) Not to mention when her and Nanase were over to get Susan new dolls.

Okay, this one's pretty simple.  To see whether it should be "she" or "her" try saying it without the other person.  Which sounds right, "when her was researching..." or "when she was researching...."?  It should be "when she and Elliot were researching" and "when she and Nanase were over to...."

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