Dear typer-ers, you're doing it wrong!

by Simon 43 Replies latest forum tech-support

  • Simon
    Simon

    There are many things wrong with the world, many injustices and crimes committed. What if we could stop one of them? Wouldn't it make the world a slightly better place? Before we know it the knock-on effect of good feeling will cause wars to cease and famines to end and the people of the world to embrace with no untoward touchy-touchy happening while they do.

    So I present to you one of the biggest crimes of our day, yes:

    THE EVIL ABOMINATION THAT IS BAD TYPE LAYOUT !!

    (dum, dum, dum, dramatic music).

    Mankind has built up a well proven set of standards for laying out type. Breaking any of them means you worship the devil and will burn in hell fire forever OR people will find your text slightly harder to read and be ever-so-mildly less content as a result - definitely one of these if not both. Imagine if your type frustrated someone enough to put them in a bad mood and they end up going on a shooting spree - do you want that on your conscience? I doubt it.

    Many of the transgressions are because people are old and the keyboard thingy reminds them of a typewriter and they think they still worship at the alter of ye-olde mono-spaced layout. Well, we don't. It's time to get with the reformation and live by these new commandments:

    1. Thou shalt not indent paragraphs. We don't do that "big first letter' thing anymore either or paint little pictures of eve and swirls in the margin or use gold-leaf (too expensive).

    2. Thou shalt only press 'return' ONCE to start a new paragraph. To one shall ye count. Never to two. Three is right out. To have a big gap may lead some to imagine you had finished and stop reading. Also shall ye not add extra blank lines after your words lest ye be accused of trying to push the next posters words down.

    3. Never shalt though press return lest you really be at the end of the paragraph. A sentence should have no break for such thing is evil in the sight of god and makes those who's screens are different widths to yours not be able to read as smoothly as otherwise they might. Trust in the power of the holy spirit and the text box to automatically wrap the text you type.

    4. Unless thou want to scream to the world that thou art an olde farte, you'd best not put two spaces after a sentence. The good lord has delivered us fancy fonts who decide for themselves what the perfect spacing should be. Only one space should be entered after a period. Also it's really a "full stop" 'cause when you American's talk of "periods" we think of something else and chuckle silently inside.

    Amen.

    We'll now celebrate with a song by the well known font 'Ariana Grande' ...

    And a helpful diagram:


  • stuckinarut2
    stuckinarut2

    I love you Simon!

    Now, I know my writing style no doubt has faults, but I admire your efforts to raise the level of "typer-erating and postifying"

  • OneEyedJoe
    OneEyedJoe
    To one shall ye count. Never to two. Three is right out.

    Classic.

    I'm not sure if I'll ever get over the 2 spaces after a period.  It's such an ingrained habit from school that it happens without any thought.

  • cappytan
    cappytan

    Usually, with raw HTML, the browser ignores double spaces and just renders a single space.

    Does this WYSIWYG editor insert non-breaking spaces when double spacing?

  • Simon
    Simon
    Does this WYSIWYG editor insert non-breaking spaces when double spacing?

    Yes, I hate it for doing it.

    If I had my way we'd all use Markdown ...

  • DJS
    DJS

    While we are being grammar/formatting nerds, can someone please say something about the use of apostrophes? They are not used for plural words except In special cases, such as when forming a plural of a word that is not normally a noun, some writers add an apostrophe for clarity. 

    Example: Here are some do's and don'ts.

    OR for lower case plurals: Minding one's p's and q's. Typically an apostrophe is not used for years/decades, such as the 1970s (NOT the 1970's), although if you shorten it (contraction), you can write the '70s.

    They are primarily used to show possession and for contractions. 

    OK, I"m through. For now.

  • besty
    besty
    DJS needs some help with the rules for italics as well.
  • DJS
    DJS

    The italics did it on its own. I didn't format it that way. Copying and pasting from Word moved a lot of things around. I caught a lot of it but missed the italics. But thanks for pointing that out. I will watch auto-formatting from now on.


  • One Last Kiss
    One Last Kiss

    Yay! Number 4 to the max, double spacing is the devil's work. 



  • Village Idiot
    Village Idiot
    I thought that this thread had something to do with type/anti-type theory.

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