{"id":2361,"date":"2009-12-16T09:56:14","date_gmt":"2009-12-16T15:56:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/?p=2361"},"modified":"2009-12-16T10:02:05","modified_gmt":"2009-12-16T16:02:05","slug":"keyboard-evolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2009\/12\/keyboard-evolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Keyboard evolution"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;m teaching a basic business writing class last night, and someone asked about whether or not they should double-space after periods and colons. I said that that had been the rule at one time, but as a practice it was pretty much dying out. Like most things having to do with the dos and don&#8217;ts of writing, this is something I know to be true, but I&#8217;m more than a little fuzzy on the <em>why<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>They (of course) asked why.<\/p>\n<p>And I heard my mouth say:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Much of it comes from graphic designers who think that the big white space after a sentence is ugly, especially now that few people use mono-spaced fonts \u00a0like courier. Those double spaces really stand out in true-type\/proportional fonts.<\/li>\n<li>But even if that weren&#8217;t the case, <strong>there is <\/strong><em><strong>no point<\/strong><\/em><strong> in wasting time with double-spacing after periods today<\/strong>, because most anything you write will end up on a website somewhere, and web browsers never show more than one space after the period, anyway. (Even if you do it, no one will see it, so it&#8217;s wasted effort.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>After my mouth was done talking, my brain was left wondering &#8220;Is that right? That actually sounds right.&#8221; (My brain is justifiably suspicious of my mouth.)<\/p>\n<p>Turns out, <a href=\"http:\/\/webword.com\/reports\/period.html\" target=\"_blank\">it pretty much was<\/a>. It&#8217;s fascinating to me, the way in which our environment (-<em>cum-<\/em>technology) visibly and continually redefines &#8220;normal&#8221; in writing\/communication.<\/p>\n<p>(And I&#8217;d like to thank Twitter for helping my unlearn a two-decades-old double-spacing habit.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;m teaching a basic business writing class last night, and someone asked about whether or not they should double-space after periods and colons. I said that that had been the rule at one time, but as a practice it was pretty much dying out. Like most things having to do with the dos and &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/2009\/12\/keyboard-evolution\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Keyboard evolution&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,42],"tags":[165],"class_list":["post-2361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musing","category-resources","category-writing","tag-typography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2361"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2366,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2361\/revisions\/2366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doycetesterman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}