2 Spaces or 1?

It's always seemed natural to me. Each sentence should be a separate thought. Space-space offers a physical reminder to my brain to switch gears and get on with the next sentence. It means "one thought done, time for a new one." . I have the image the clunk of the turnstile the thought moves from stuck in my brain to out there on paper (figuratively).

I still hang around Mac folk, even after my apostasy in 1996 (when Windows became better than the Mac). These snobs were tsking about folks who couldn't retrain their brains to the one-space orthodoxy prescribed by their favorite deity: Adobe, god of Desktop Publishing. I mentioned offhandedly that I learned two spaces, I like two spaces, and that I'll die a two space man. They reacted as if I had walked into a church and relieved myself in the baptismal font. "Heresy," one screamed. "Off with his head," bellowed another.

In that moment, I understood that I truly was not a Mac person. hell, i say waist you're time on people who cant spell or use the shift key. (It is physically unsettling for me to type that way.) Any programmer worth their salt will tell you that at least 40% of their efforts goes into munging texts. If that extra space makes your text look bad, fix it! Apparently they'd never mastered the concept of search and replace. s%/([\.\!\?]) {2,}/\1 /g handles it rather nicely, thank you.

My children already put emulate their parents and use all fingers to type (not always all of the correct ones, but their brains and hands are well beyond the hunt-and-peck stage). And I am damned well going to teach them two spaces!   

11:37:29 PM  comment []    

One Down, 31,999 to Go: Surrendering to a Solitary Obsession

It keeps office workers from concentrating on their jobs. It deprives children of parental attention. It estranges husbands from wives. It gives writers an excuse not to write.

It doesn't exist on either of our workstations.

And a quibble. If I recall correctly, FreeCell shipped with Windows 95. It takes 7 years to get a notice in the Times?  

7:12:08 PM  comment []