Bedrock & Paradox

I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a non-human world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock.

Update

This week has had some very long days, but the end is in sight. I need to finish the final edits to the essay I’m working on now, write another fairly short and easy paper, finish a few odd projects (which have little intellectual burden, just one of time), and go skiing.

I finally have up on the Supercomps. Conventional wisdom about ski boot fit I just don’t buy. I want my toes to wiggle, dammit, and refuse to see how they’d stay warm otherwise. So I found myself some used blue T2s that fit really well. If trail runners can stay solid on my feet going down into the Grand Canyon while my toes wiggle free, I don’t see why ski boots cannot do the same.

If anyone want’s a pair of 9.5 Supercomps, heavily modded but in really good shape, I’ll pay them forward for the cost of shipping.

And finally, to the thing the blew my mind today. I’ve always been raised that between a period and the start of new sentence you have two spaces. Every post of the nearly 1,000 I’ve made, along with everything I’ve written since I was about 3, has followed that rule, but someone today told me it was a cultural artifact of a certain period in American education. That some kids have been and are being (?!) taught that one space is quite enough. And this wasn’t just anyone, but one of my classmates for whom I have the utmost respect?

So what say you, noble readers? Marni, what are you teaching?

I’m not kidding, this totally rocked my world, at least until I got my Reuben at lunch and went back to editing.

DaveC

13 responses to “Update”

  1. Marni Avatar
    Marni

    The space issue is interesting. I have always been taught to do the two spaces between sentences thing. That has always been the norm. Then in my grad class this semester the prof pointed out that new APA format calls for a single space after a period, so she would count off if we had two. It was really hard to type a 12 page paper having to think about the space after periods. Very strange, hard to change, and looks weird. Chris, on the other hand, has always only used one space for some reason…As a Kindergarten teacher I'm lucky if my kids leave any sort of space between words, letters, or themselves for that matter. If I were to teach them typing though, I'd stick with the two spaces. Our generation will be the ones making the APA guidelines here soon enough, and they'll change it back :)

    Reply
  2. Jill Avatar
    Jill

    Associated Press and typical journalism style is a single space, a standard I think that was created to save on typesetting.I can't tell you how many extra spaces I have deleted from the sentences of submitted columns, letters and articles. So annoying.

    Reply
  3. Dave Avatar
    Dave

    Well, anything that APA sez I am automatically inclined to do the opposite. My lifetime mission is to turn social work to U of Chicago.As for those journalists…… ;)I'm finishing up an essay in APA, with two space, thankuberybunch. And I'm even worried about it getting too long for the journal it's intended for.Sigh.

    Reply
  4. Tom Purvis Avatar
    Tom Purvis

    I gave up the two spaces when I started editing HTML. HTML ignores non-printing characters (tab, space, newline) after the first one. So unless I input tags like  I get one character between sentences. And it looks fine. It was good, it helped me let go of an anal retentive habit which often caused me to make a second (and now perceived as unimportant) editing pass.

    Reply
  5. Dave Harris Avatar
    Dave Harris

    Well how about that. I've been on the two space paradigm forever and just figured that was the global standard. It wasn't until about 3 months ago that LW gave me crap about it…and indeed it is like a signature of sorts in the 2-epic blogs. She uses one, I use two.Old habits die hard and I ain't about to try!

    Reply
  6. Cellarrat Avatar
    Cellarrat

    Woha! this is truly mind bending…I've been in the 2 space camp… I don't think i could change..

    Reply
  7. Enel Avatar
    Enel

    Neither I, nor wyf (the writing tutor) have ever heard of this one space nonsense. So there.Interesting that if this is translate into html, I think it will post with only one space. Testing? Both sentences above have two spaces.

    Reply
  8. Enel Avatar
    Enel

    Ha. There is only one space here. Looks like Big Brother will make you one space on the web.

    Reply
  9. Eric Avatar
    Eric

    dude, one spaceanyone how thinks different is weird.

    Reply
  10. Ed Avatar
    Ed

    One space…always.Ed

    Reply
  11. Simon Avatar
    Simon

    In fact, Blogger now knocks off the extra space automatically. I still keep it in there out of habit, though.

    Reply
  12. Sean Avatar
    Sean

    I've always typed with two space kung fu and it's always bothered me that Blogger cuts it down to one.

    Reply
  13. Rockin' Avatar
    Rockin’

    I'm with you. Two after periods and colons, one after commas and semi-colons.

    Reply

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