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Why I Two-Space

stevelosh.com Essays & writing Essays & articles Design & creativity Class of 2022-10 Hall of Fame
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Resurfaced independently across 4 calendar years, with breakout response in 2 of them.

submissions
5
submitters
4
observed span
2012–2022
peak thread · 102 comments
77 pts
latest 20+ return · 2022-10-23
35 pts

Submission timeline

2007–2026

One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.

First comments on top threads

HN comment order

This is quote possibly the most beautiful blog I have ever seen. That said, it's a stupid argument. If you want to two-space, fine, but be aware that most people believe and understand you're living in the typographic stone age alongside people who indent their paragraphs and use Whitesmiths. Two-spacing is a result of monospace typewriters, which couldn't provide the "space and a half" spacing that traditional typesetting put between sentences, however these days most of the people I see…

debacle·77-point thread·

Whether I 2-space or not, the more important thing is, I would never try to tell you what to do over something so trivial. Whichever way I prefer to write, or read, it doesn't make enough difference as a reader to justify even mentioning it, let alone screeding about it. Anyone writing, complaining, even merely picking a side out loud and trying to defend one side in forums like this, are all automatically wrong because of that, regardless which side…

So adding an extra space between every sentence all the time, just for vim's "deleting sentence" to work? (not even by default, and that's a very specific command). And the command breaks because there is a . in the sentence. So changing a pretty much worldwide convention for a pretty specific edge-case on a rarely used command in vim. Why not just update the command to detect the special cases like Mr. Mrs., seems like a much simpler solution.

I double-space because it makes scanning text easier. Exactly like how we use white space to indicate or separate paragraphs. To do: Find a browser extension that will make the division between sentences more obvious.

The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.

Breakout years
2

100+ points or 50+ comments

Total points
131

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Total comments
178

reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking

Every submission

DateTitle as submittedByPointsComments
2012-10-12Why I Two-SpaceFirst breakout · Best threaddcope77102
2019-03-17Why I Two-Space (2012)tosh135
2021-11-02I Two-Space (2012)Tomte10
2022-05-18Why I Two-Spacebehnamoh51
2022-10-23Why I Two-Space (2012)Hall induction · Latest 20+ point returnbehnamoh3570