[PLUG-TALK] winWord Typeface

Keith Lofstrom keithl at kl-ic.com
Sat May 28 20:21:45 UTC 2005


On Fri, 27 May 2005, Rich Shepard wrote:
...
>there are always two spaces after each period.
>
>And, haven't folks discovered that they are no longer using a typewriter 
>with a monospace font so there is no need for two spaces to distinguish 
>sentences?

I supoz u meen:
ther ar alwaz 2 spasiz after ech piryud.

And havnt fokz diskuverd that tha ar no longr uzing a typritr with a
monospac font so ther iz no ned 4 2 spacz 2 distingwish sintincz?

... az u can se, ther iz no ned 4 xtra chars in other parz uv a
sintinc 2.  Der 2 B difrint!

(Mark Twain did this much better in one of his essays...)

On Sat, May 28, 2005 at 02:16:19AM -0700, Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> As Ross pointed out, caring is using the convention.  We must show respect 
> for those with whom we communicate.  The more work we can do on our end, 
> the less work must be done on the end of the reader and, ultimately, 
> that's how you get them to pay attention to the message.

Wow - I'm not only agreeing with Jeme, but admiring his prose... :-)

The extra characters and typographic conventions are arbitrary, as is
driving on the same side of the road, or wearing pants.  We get along
a lot better if we adhere to convention, as long as the costs of doing
so are not onerous or hypocritically imposed on others.  When I write
for publication in 100K+ venues, I consider that every second I waste
of a reader's time is multiplied into a day, summed over all the readers.
This encourages conventionality, brevity, and clear exposition.  It is
the content that matters, not my daring contempt for convention.

In email, it means unwrapping all the >>> quotes of quotes, which
look like a LISP programmer having a seizure.  When sending an html
link embedded in plain text, it means leaving spaces before and
after so the link is easy to grab with a mouse.  Usually it means
bottom posting (and even unwrapping a tangle of bottom/top posting
I am quoting), but sometimes a large quoted block is moved to the
end, if it needs preserving but not necessarily re-reading.  But as
Jeme says, it is all about respect for your readers.  At least, the
sane ones...

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com         Voice (503)-520-1993
KLIC --- Keith Lofstrom Integrated Circuits --- "Your Ideas in Silicon"
Design Contracting in Bipolar and CMOS - Analog, Digital, and Scan ICs



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