Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 06:06:07 +0530 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: 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: <20000601060607.G4854@physics.iisc.ernet.in> In-Reply-To: <20000601095056.D16657@wantadilla.lemis.com>; from grog@lemis.com on Thu, Jun 01, 2000 at 09:50:56AM %2B0930 References: <20000528135144.B15565@wantadilla.lemis.com> <200005311543.BAA03923@dungeon.home> <20000601095056.D16657@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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Greg Lehey said on Jun 1, 2000 at 09:50:56: > On Thursday, 1 June 2000 at 1:43:17 +1000, Stephen McKay wrote: > > Greg Lehey wrote: -snip- > >> In case you missed it, in England and Australia the convention is one > >> space after a full stop. -snip- > > There is no "one space" convention in Australia. I learned typing in school > > (an actually useful skill, no less), and two spaces were mandatory. I can > > accept the possibility of regional variation among states, or the more > > probable dilution of skill due to increased foreign word processor use, > > but the two space rule has not to my knowledge been revoked. > > My statement was based on observation. If you have any documentary > backup, it would interest me. Based on observation, you're right. But most of the fixed-spaced text one sees these days is email, and based on observation there are no grammatical rules anymore either. In printed material, since everyone uses MS word these days, there is also (based on observation) no difference between em-dashes, en-dashes, hyphens or minus signs, no difference between left and right quotes, no such thing as ligature or kerning or any of the typesetting nittigritties Knuth talks about in "The TeXbook". In fact there is no extra space after sentences in printed material. (I exaggerate, but only slightly, I think.) There are rules, and there are observations, it's not the same thing... End of rant. Actually I'm not a hardliner on the two-spaces thing. But the amount of sloppy typesetting in the world makes me ill -- I don't mind ordinary typewritten stuff, but I can't stand seeing a Word document anymore, because it tries to be publication quality and fails so badly... R. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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