Julian Assange is wrong (but not about what you think). And it's not just him.

[LuckyTheDog]

I totally agree.

Space Invaders

Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.

By Farhad Manjoo

Last month, Gawker published a series of messages that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had once written to a 19-year-old girl he'd become infatuated with. Gawker called the e-mails "creepy," "lovesick," and "stalkery"; I'd add overwrought, self-important, and dorky. ("Our intimacy seems like the memory of a strange dream to me," went a typical line.) Still, given all we've heard about Assange's puffed-up personality, the substance of his e-mail was pretty unsurprising. What really surprised me was his typography.

Here's a fellow who's been using computers since at least the mid-1980s, a guy whose globetrotting tech-wizardry has come to symbolize all that's revolutionary about the digital age. Yet when he sits down to type, Julian Assange reverts to an antiquated habit that would not have been out of place in the secretarial pools of the 1950s: He uses two spaces after every period. Which—for the record—is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.

More: http://www.slate.com/id/2281146/

[JDPriestly]

1. I will always use to spaces after a period. It makes text more readable.

Especially for those of us who are miserably near-sighted.

[boppers]

2. That's the font's problem. eom

[Silent3]

3. It's wasted keystrokes on DU and many other online forums.

The end result no matter how many spaces you type is one space being displayed.

There are as many as ten spaces typed between words in the above sentence, but all you're going to see is regular spacing. Type as many spaces as you like after a period, it won't looking any different than if you'd typed one.

[boppers]

5. :)

The   end   result          no   matter   how many spaces     
  you type is one space   being displayed.

[Silent3]

8. Yes, yes...

There         are     tricks to   force    the  issue!

You..............can even do it.....without............going into a monospaced font. :)

[RegieRocker]

10. Hmmm is that so?

Yes it is. That is programming at work.

[boppers]

4. Computer users who learned to "type" are the problem.

I learned typography as I was learning text entry, I never laid fingers on a "typewriter" until my mid-20's...

Even more hilarious are the users who don't realize that html (such as that on this board) actually *strips out* the additional spaces. <--(I typed two spaces after that sentence, it will display only one.)

[PufPuf23]

6. So what?

People complain about paragraphs of over three or four sentences at DU.

The concept of wikileaks should not be personalized unless one thinks it is your best interest to be lied to and have your country lie and be petty to other nations and the world community while devastating domestic society. But we have been taught American "Exceptionalism". Wikileaks is the tip of an iceberg of compartmentalized and other actions unlikely to see the light in a profound and timely manner.

Really most of wikileaks so far is what many of us already strongly suspected.

[RegieRocker]

9. People always telling people how to act, how to dress, whom to love,

What you can say , how to spell, how to write, how to type and on and on and on. Run you're own damn life! This post wasn't directed to you it inadvertently ended up here.

[MilesColtrane]

7. He's an international man of mystery, an iconoclast, a rebel who plays by his own rules until...

he breaks them.

Your silly conventions mean nothing to him.

When I was 27 I became infatuated with a 19 year old. The difference between Julian and me is that I didn't feel the need to put her down after she kindly declined my interest.