Single Space or Double Space
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Oxford (or serial) commas also follow the general styles for educated writing: Oxford comma highlights that you use American writing style (seen as uneducated in most of the world) and the non-Oxford traditional style aligns you with Britain and the Queen's English (seen as educated throughout most of the world.) For the same reasons that British spelling is beneficial when you want to stand out in a positive way, so is avoiding the Oxford comma.
The reality is, both forms are necessary as there are cases where both are the only way to be clear when writing. There are many times when either will work. Neither can ever be an "always."
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Dear pedants, is there such thing as an Oxford semi-colon?
Is this sentence correct:
Five resellers and implementation experts were invited to bid for both Sage and NAV. These were: Acora; Fraser Price Consulting; DMC Software Solutions; Paradise Computing and Probitas Enterprise Solutionsor should I phrase it differently? I didn't want to use commas when listing company names, because company names sometimes include commas. Should there be a semi-colon after Paradise Computing?
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@Carnival-Boy I see your logic, but I'm not clear if a semi-colon can be used that way. You've ventured into the territory of a rule that I am not familiar with. I think that a better option, but maybe not correct, is to put the company names into quotes, rather than changing commas to semi-colons.
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If using semi-colons, at least in this instance, I would keep the "Oxford" semi-colon because the semi-colons add a little bit of uncertainty on their own.
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Here is a pictorial guide on use of a semicolon: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon
http://s3.amazonaws.com/theoatmeal-img/comics/semicolon/header.png
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I am a single spacer now, but I used to be a double spacer. Does that help?
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@NetworkNerdWifey said:
I am a single spacer now, but I used to be a double spacer. Does that help?
I researched this matter once, and the double-spacing thing is from the old typewriter days, and some people carried it over into the digital age. You can use either single or double and neither one is considered incorrect or unprofessional. However, single space is the standard, and has been for awhile.
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I'm still used to doing two spaces after a period, since that is how I learned. Most sites automatically strip it out when I post though.
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@Nic said:
I'm still used to doing two spaces after a period, since that is how I learned. Most sites automatically strip it out when I post though.
Yup.
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Was just typing an etc. in the middle of a sentence and realized that without single spacing between words and double spacing at the end of a sentence that you cannot tell when etc. is mid sentence or at the end of a sentence!
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@scottalanmiller said:
Was just typing an etc. in the middle of a sentence and realized that without single spacing between words and double spacing at the end of a sentence that you cannot tell when etc. is mid sentence or at the end of a sentence!
Context.
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@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Was just typing an etc. in the middle of a sentence and realized that without single spacing between words and double spacing at the end of a sentence that you cannot tell when etc. is mid sentence or at the end of a sentence!
Context.
That's a nice thought but that is not how punctuation works and it is very hard to determine context in many cases. One major case is that grammar checkers can't figure out what is going on. There should be no need for context and under traditional style rules no context was needed. The need for context at all is caused by an oversight by overzealous people who think that changing grammar rules simply for the sake of change and not because of style or logic is a good idea.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Was just typing an etc. in the middle of a sentence and realized that without single spacing between words and double spacing at the end of a sentence that you cannot tell when etc. is mid sentence or at the end of a sentence!
Context.
That's a nice thought but that is not how punctuation works and it is very hard to determine context in many cases. One major case is that grammar checkers can't figure out what is going on. There should be no need for context and under traditional style rules no context was needed. The need for context at all is caused by an oversight by overzealous people who think that changing grammar rules simply for the sake of change and not because of style or logic is a good idea.
Pretty sure context works.
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@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Was just typing an etc. in the middle of a sentence and realized that without single spacing between words and double spacing at the end of a sentence that you cannot tell when etc. is mid sentence or at the end of a sentence!
Context.
That's a nice thought but that is not how punctuation works and it is very hard to determine context in many cases. One major case is that grammar checkers can't figure out what is going on. There should be no need for context and under traditional style rules no context was needed. The need for context at all is caused by an oversight by overzealous people who think that changing grammar rules simply for the sake of change and not because of style or logic is a good idea.
Pretty sure context works.
That's not the point. Scott's point - I think - is that the rules were never officially changed. Short of laziness why aren't you putting two spaces at the end of a sentence? Why, perhaps it's because you never took typing class, or you had a horrible teacher who didn't mandate the 'rules' to double space.
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@thanksaj said:
Pretty sure context works.
"Pretty sure" doesn't cut it either in grammar nor does it authorize sloppiness.
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@Dashrender said:
@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Was just typing an etc. in the middle of a sentence and realized that without single spacing between words and double spacing at the end of a sentence that you cannot tell when etc. is mid sentence or at the end of a sentence!
Context.
That's a nice thought but that is not how punctuation works and it is very hard to determine context in many cases. One major case is that grammar checkers can't figure out what is going on. There should be no need for context and under traditional style rules no context was needed. The need for context at all is caused by an oversight by overzealous people who think that changing grammar rules simply for the sake of change and not because of style or logic is a good idea.
Pretty sure context works.
That's not the point. Scott's point - I think - is that the rules were never officially changed. Short of laziness why aren't you putting two spaces at the end of a sentence? Why, perhaps it's because you never took typing class, or you had a horrible teacher who didn't mandate the 'rules' to double space.
I did take a typing class. I was taught single space. Double-spacing is from the typewriter era, which I was not a part of. Single-spacing is the standard.
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@thanksaj said:
I did take a typing class. I was taught single space. Double-spacing is from the typewriter era, which I was not a part of. Single-spacing is the standard.
Double spacing is from the hand written era. It continued into the typewriter era. It continued into the computer era. It's how the language has always been written. It is not an artifact of typewriters no matter what BS someone is trying to sell you.
If your teachers screwed up and taught you wrong that's too bad, but they were wrong. Single space is not and never has been a standard. It's just sloppy and it's like "text speak" on a less sloppy, but still sloppy scale. It's just another "teenage" rebellion against clear, crisp communications. You don't say "u r" or "lol" in formal writing, you don't single space either.
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Handily, single spacing is an easy way to identify people who don't take their own writing as seriously. Although with so many systems either automatically adding spaces or removing them it can be tough to tell who is doing it and who is not.
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Double spacing is only questioned today because of HTML which strips white space. If you are writing in a word process, writing for print or have used computers for any purpose other than HTML then double spacing has always applied and there was never the slightest hint of logic as to why to avoid it.
The web was never designed for quality type reproduction and the lack of double space support is just one artifact of that heritage. Every system meant for quality reproduction does support double spacing. It's an extension of lazy kids who lack all context and think that the web is everything and don't realize why it is lacking on the web and don't realize that double spacing existed always and are used to not using well written documents that they don't realize the importance in both clear communications and in making the written word easier to read.
Sloppy is sloppy. It shows that someone doesn't care about the quality of their output.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Sloppy is sloppy. It shows that someone doesn't care about the quality of their output.
Well, I will give a little to those who were taught wrong, but only as long as they haven't been told the correct way to do it.
