Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 06:50:18 -0400 From: "Troy Settle" <troy@picus.com> To: "Mark Blackman" <tmb@sophos.com>, "Greg Lehey" <grog@lemis.com> Cc: "Stephen McKay" <mckay@thehub.com.au>, "Tim Vanderhoek" <hoek@FreeBSD.org>, <freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.org> Subject: RE: Punctuation conventions (was: cvs commit: src/games/fortune/datfiles fortunes) Message-ID: <FCEELIAEIIECDGKKJLMIKECDCAAA.troy@picus.com> In-Reply-To: <20000601111501.A11561@sophos.com>
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Ok, so we're agreed. Two spaces at the end of a sentence is what we're taught in the US, UK, and AU. Any one from another English speaking country care to share the rules from their freshman keyboarding (typing) class? Just a wild guess here, but I think the rule stems from the laziness of some people to abbr. certain words. You see, abbreviations also require a period, but if they're not at the end of a sentence, it's noted from the single space following. This is also the case in Mr., Mrs., and Ms. Though one wonders why an abbreviation at the end of a sentence doesn't get two periods followed by two spaces. This is certainly an odd feature (bug?) in our language. The fact that some (most?) people don't use two spaces at the end of a sentence is probably due to ignorance, indifference, or laziness. I for one, check for those two spaces as part of the proof reading process (though I'm not always diligent about proof reading). It gets really irritating when doing web pages in a WYSIWYG editor, as most are fond of putting a ' ' in the source, which makes for very ugly HTML. Another spot where these rules bug the hell out of me, is when typing an address in Word. I was taught in high school that there are two spaces between the state and zip code (i.e. 'City, ST 12345'). Most frustrating to see that red wavy line telling me I have an error when I know that I don't. -- Troy Settle Network Analyst Picus Communications 540.633.6327 ** -----Original Message----- ** From: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG ** [mailto:owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of Mark Blackman ** Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2000 6:15 AM ** To: Greg Lehey ** Cc: Stephen McKay; Tim Vanderhoek; freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.org ** Subject: Re: Punctuation conventions (was: cvs commit: ** src/games/fortune/datfiles fortunes) ** ** ** I've not done any text analysis of e-mails to discern empirical ** usage patterns, however a quick poll of five of my British colleagues ** (I'm a "colonial") suggests that in Britain, two spaces is ** the rule taught in English and typing classes. ** ** I wouldn't be surprised to discover that a number of people ** writing e-mails these days a) completely ignore their teachers ** or b) never took any classes. ** ** ** On Thu, Jun 01, 2000 at 09:50:56AM +0930, Greg Lehey wrote: ** > ** > I didn't say I was conventional :-) I use the two space convention ** > because I find it more convenient. But most text written in ** Australia ** > or England has a single space after the full stop. Period. ** > ** ** -- ** Mark Blackman,Internet Systems Administrator,Sophos Anti-Virus ** e-mail: tmb@sophos.com http://www.sophos.com ** US Support: +1 888 SOPHOS 9 UK Support: +44 1235 559933 ** ** ** To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org ** with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message ** To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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