In the talking typing heads policy battle currently raging across the blogosphere, I hereby declare the NCTA as winner. I actually have very little interest or knowledge of the topic at hand, however there can be only one… and Verizon’s lobbyist is still ending sentences with two spaces, while Cable’s lobbyist linked his rival’s blog. (Bonus 1/2 point to Cable for using WordPress, though they haven’t upgraded to 2.5.* yet.)
Verizon’s PolicyBlog initial salvo:
First, should consumers have information from all providers before choosing a carrier for voice or video services . . . or a package of services? Of course. That seems like a no-brainer. Information – the much-touted concept of transparency – is both the consumer’s and competition’s best friend. How can consumers know if they’re getting the best deal if one of the service providers can’t give them information before they’ve made the purchase?
However, when customers make a decision to leave you, you are obligated to honor their decision to request that their phone number be transferred to their new provider, and respect their privacy by porting their current number within 4 days without harassing them with marketing retention calls. Congress, on a bipartisan basis, and the FCC have previously recognized that integrity in the number porting process is essential for true competition to flourish.
Cynthia Brumfield suggests they’re both speaking out of turn:
More interesting than the fun back-and-forth blogfight between the highly paid lobbyists is the fact that they’re arguing over an FCC decision that hasn’t been publicly announced yet and is part of a rare “restricted” proceeding, meaning that no one is supposed to be blabbing about it unless everyone who is a party to the proceeding is present.
I still double-space after sentences as a habit, and because I think it just doesn’t feel right to have a single space after a period. WordPress ignores it, though, and I thought it was a glitch until I did some searching around.
Yup, my high school typing teacher drilled permanently into my head double spaces at the end of a sentence. Fortunately, Movable Type also corrects for this…will switch to WordPress (and thereby go up in Dave’s esteem) when time permits.
Cynthia B.
Moveable Type is fine too. However, Verizon’s rolled their own solution. Work harder, not smarter! ;)
And Cable’s retort was more convincing, though I’m not qualified to comment on the accuracy of either argument.
PS, It’s the HTML that doesn’t allow two consecutive spaces without forcing it using a
$nbsp.+1 for the graphic
+1 for the Highlander reference
-1 for the crack about two spaces after a sentence (seriously, when did that change?)
Total= 1 point for Dave
About the same time we all threw away our IBM Selectrics. :p
PS That picture was $1 at iStockPhoto – glad you approve. I need to give you a graphics budget…
I still type two spaces after the end of a sentence as well. This was drilled into my by a friend and co-author back in college, around 1990. And it really does make a difference when reading fixed width fonts. As someone who still regularly reads USENet in trn and reads all of my personal email in mutt on a UNIX shell, both with fixed width terminal fonts, I don’t plan on stopping any time soon. ;-)
That’s what software is for. For blogging it looks better when I’m typing input, and when it displays it doesn’t matter since HTML collapses whitespace. Any decent office suite will ‘auto-correct’ the double spacing so I don’t worry about it there either.