I think that the two spaces started going away with texting, where you want to use all the characters available. I still do the double space, because I feel it is proper. My mom still uses the small letter L for representing the #1, which is a hold-over from typewriter days. Nobody visual would notice the difference, but screenreaders sure do. I thought she made a mistake when I first noticed this in a message she sent, and when it happened again, I realized what she was doing. Glenn ----- Original Message ----- From: "Janina Sajka" <janina@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at linux-speakup.org> Sent: Friday, May 10, 2013 12:37 PM Subject: Re: Dumb post to the Stargardts Facebook group The convention of putting two spaces following the period which concludes a sentence is a hold over from the days of typewriters. Of a necessity these were unable to adjust the spacing of chars. Everything was monowidth, i.e. a 'w' and an 'i' took the same amount of space left to right. The console is still like that I think. Actually, I'm not 100% certain, because I can't see it, but what else does 64 rows by 175 columns (my current screen size) mean? With the advent of GUI, we've been able to adopt fonts and typographic conventions that can adjust chars on screen and on paper printouts. The 'i' no longer need occupy the same space left to right as the 'w.' Therefore, it's no longer the convention to end a sentence with two space chars. Janina Albert Sten-Clanton writes: > Greg, I learned to put two spaces after a period ending a sentence when I > learned to type. I don't know if conventions have changed, but that's why > I > do it. > > Al > > -----Original Message----- > From: Speakup [mailto:speakup-bounces at linux-speakup.org] On Behalf Of > Gregory Nowak > Sent: Tuesday, April 09, 2013 7:20 PM > To: Speakup is a screen review system for Linux. > Subject: Re: Dumb post to the Stargardts Facebook group > > On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 07:08:39AM -0700, Tony Baechler wrote: > > I always proofread everything before I post, so hopefully my posts are > > reasonably free of errors. Most people don't. It's amazing how many > > mistakes you can catch with 30 seconds of proofreading. > > I think a part of this for blind and sighted alike is laziness. I know a > few > people who are just content to type what they have to say, and just hit > send, because they don't feel like reading through what they wrote. These > are people who are sighted and blind. I'm not assuming here either. When I > mentioned this to them, this is what they told me, they don't feel like > reading through casual writing. Unfortunately, I've looked through their > professional writing too, and they are invariably surprised by the amount > of > errors I point out to them in such pieces of writing. > > On another note, I noticed a number of blind people, including yourself > putting two spaces in between every sentence. I put in just one, because > this is how I learned it in braille, and it just stuck. Is there some sort > of significance to the two spaces thing, or is it just personal > preference? > > Greg > > > -- > web site: http://www.gregn.net > gpg public key: http://www.gregn.net/pubkey.asc > skype: gregn1 > (authorization required, add me to your contacts list first) > > -- > Free domains: http://www.eu.org/ or mail dns-manager at EU.org > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at linux-speakup.org > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at linux-speakup.org > http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup -- Janina Sajka, Phone: +1.443.300.2200 sip:janina at asterisk.rednote.net Email: janina at rednote.net Linux Foundation Fellow Executive Chair, Accessibility Workgroup: http://a11y.org The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Chair, Protocols & Formats http://www.w3.org/wai/pf Indie UI http://www.w3.org/WAI/IndieUI/ _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup at linux-speakup.org http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
