OK, the second link goes into historical typesetting, and that's definitely my jam, but--what is the relevance of that to how people should space their prose now?
I'll tell you what. Farhan Manjoo is right in substance, if not in style. (Though what he's arguing about is accepted style, so I guess that's sort of funny.) We only need one space, and the reason we use two is that a lot of us were trained on typewriters. Arguments from 18th century typesetting are... decorative. I am happy that many people space incorrectly, because it gives me something easy to do when I'm editing their work. It is incorrect because it doesn't conform to currently accepted styles, not because it is sloth, lust or gluttony.
I don't know why people go all judgmental over how to spell OK (okay? OK? okay?) or whether color should have a u in there somewhere, when what really matters is the correct placement of apostrophes.
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zvi and
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Date: 2014-02-06 03:10 pm (UTC)I'll tell you what. Farhan Manjoo is right in substance, if not in style. (Though what he's arguing about is accepted style, so I guess that's sort of funny.) We only need one space, and the reason we use two is that a lot of us were trained on typewriters. Arguments from 18th century typesetting are... decorative. I am happy that many people space incorrectly, because it gives me something easy to do when I'm editing their work. It is incorrect because it doesn't conform to currently accepted styles, not because it is sloth, lust or gluttony.
I don't know why people go all judgmental over how to spell OK (okay? OK? okay?) or whether color should have a u in there somewhere, when what really matters is the correct placement of apostrophes.