I thought Robin Williams (the writer, not the comedian) fixed this a long time ago?

[ztirffritz]

I learned typing on an IBM Selectric(sp?). It was ironically in a room next to a room full of Macs. I learned to put two spaces after a period and have never heard that I'm supposed to do otherwise. What is the reasoning behind not putting the spaces? It's not like the spaces cost more or consume more electrons (OK technically they do, but I think that we can spare them). I was also taught when making a list to do as follows: item1, item2, and item3. I've been told that the ',' after '2' is not necessary by several people, but I still do it because that's how Mrs. Alexander taught us in 2nd Grade.

[tronnei]

ztirffritz wrote: I was also taught when making a list to do as follows: item1, item2, and item3. I've been told that the ',' after '2' is not necessary by several people, but I still do it because that's how Mrs. Alexander taught us in 2nd Grade.

My son is in 9th grade English and his teacher says the same thing.

[ztirffritz]

tronnei wrote:
[quote=ztirffritz]I was also taught when making a list to do as follows: item1, item2, and item3. I've been told that the ',' after '2' is not necessary by several people, but I still do it because that's how Mrs. Alexander taught us in 2nd Grade.

My son is in 9th grade English and his teacher says the same thing.
I had to go look this up. It's called an 'Oxford Comma'. Among Grammer Nazis it has caused quite the schism.

[RAMd®d]

It's a free country and people punctuate and format any way they want.

Where they do it dictates whether they're right or wrong.

Forums are the worst examples of grammar I've seen since school.

Punctuation probably fares worse than most.

I love the Oxford comma, and have never learned it's unnecessary. It makes sense to me, and that's what's important.

I'm curious about other countries' and cultures conventions.

Why to some people put a space between the end of a sentence and the punctuation ? Where is that taught ?

Is it an affectation to put a space between the end of a sentence and the punctuation and not between the punctuation and the next sentence ?I've seen this a lot on forums .Nowhere else .

Then there are plurals denoted by an apostrophe. It may be car's or cat's or cat's in hat's. I don't know if that's cultural, ignorance, or laziness. I've seen it often though not 100's of times. (That was deliberate.)

I know some countries use apostrophe's or elevated commas in numbers as in 100'000. And what about using the $ at the end of a number, as in 100'000$ .Some countries to that with their currency.

Reading the way some people write, I usually see whether or not English is their first language. Are these conventions mere affectations among EFL people in the states?

Not to mention people who've apparently disabled their caps keys, leaving it in either position. I will say that it's easier for me to read something in all lowercase then something in all uppercase.

And those who don't use paragraphs. This one is particularly annoying for me. I sometimes have trouble reading them accurately, getting lost in the never ending paragraph. So I just skip the post. Especially if it's uppercase with no paragraphs.

I skip posts rather than complain about structure because I'm far from correct. But I am curious about some of various practices of various forum members.



One thing I'd like to see in any forum is the ability to put a half-space between lines. I wonder how "readable" paragraphs of that might be. Or would it just end up looking like lorem ipsum.

Given all the oddities floating around out there, double-spacing between lines seems to be the least annoying to me, but then I don't see it very often.

[deckeda]

We could talk all day about grammar and punctuation. I can seldom do them correctly without double checking but am nevertheless cursed with recognizing when they're "wrong."

This is my favorite explanation of when to use an apostrophe: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/apostrophe

[vision63]

I was glad that people had poor punctuation. I got to charge them more to reformat their gibberish for publications.

Chica's greatest work was "How to Boss Your Fonts Around." It showed me how to finally boss dem bastards around.

[N-OS X-tasy!]

ztirffritz wrote:
What is the reasoning behind not putting the spaces?

On a typewriter, every character, including a period and a space, is the same width. Thus, it became customary to use two spaces after the end of a sentence, to make it stand out. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to distinguish between the space between any two words and the space between the end of one sentence and the beginning of the next.

Computer word processing brought with it usage of the proportional font, which automatically places a space at the end of a sentence that is larger than the spaces between words. Thus, adding an additional space to this causes the overall space at the end of the sentence to be too large.

[Octave Doctor]

I had a copy of The Little Mac Book, found it at a book sale. That helped me a lot, since you couldn't find any mac books around here in the early 2000s. When I took classes at the Vo-Tech, it was all XP, and I didn't have one of those yet, just that little Performa 460 a friend gave me.

And I later got How To Boss Your Fonts Around--from the looks of them, they needed some bossin'.

[Article Accelerator]

ztirffritz wrote:
I learned typing on an IBM Selectric(sp?). It was ironically in a room next to a room full of Macs. I learned to put two spaces after a period and have never heard that I'm supposed to do otherwise. What is the reasoning behind not putting the spaces? It's not like the spaces cost more or consume more electrons (OK technically they do, but I think that we can spare them). I was also taught when making a list to do as follows: item1, item2, and item3. I've been told that the ',' after '2' is not necessary by several people, but I still do it because that's how Mrs. Alexander taught us in 2nd Grade.

Mrs Alexander was correct about the Oxford comma. She was wrong about two spaces after a period.

[JoeH]

Article Accelerator wrote:
[quote=ztirffritz]
I learned typing on an IBM Selectric(sp?). It was ironically in a room next to a room full of Macs. I learned to put two spaces after a period and have never heard that I'm supposed to do otherwise. What is the reasoning behind not putting the spaces? It's not like the spaces cost more or consume more electrons (OK technically they do, but I think that we can spare them). I was also taught when making a list to do as follows: item1, item2, and item3. I've been told that the ',' after '2' is not necessary by several people, but I still do it because that's how Mrs. Alexander taught us in 2nd Grade.

Mrs Alexander was correct about the Oxford comma. She was wrong about two spaces after a period.
No, she was not wrong as has been explained several times in this thread. You used two spaces with a typewriter after the end of a sentence, and you can find that in multiple style books from the period. Most persons never used typesetting equipment during that time. I did use both typesetting equipment and typewriters then, only on the typesetter was a single em-space used as opposed to en-spaces elsewhere. Now you could find style guides for some publications that used a single space to get more words on a page using a mono-spaced typeface, but they were exceptions in the US. In Europe, both single and doubled spaces were standard, it depended on the country.