Pet Peeves: Aka Things That Make You Go "Gah!"

[auntlada]

The first thing I do in documents I proof is a search and replace for double spaces. I also do it last thing in case I accidentally add them.

I actually learned one space in journalism school in the 1980s. Two spaces creates too much trapped white space in the newspaper. Now, it looks old-fashioned, or so I've read.

Edited May 6, 2017 by auntlada

[TattleTeeny]

Quote

My apparently new downstairs neighbor is "serenading" me with John Denver songs. It could be (and has been) worse

Look at it this way: at least it's not your musician-by-trade BF doing it inside the house? It only happens every so often, which is good. But he also sprinkles hundred-year-old John Denver/plane jokes (the kind that a "funny dad" would tell) in here and there, which is bad.
 

Quote

My laundry closet is dead smack in the middle of the second floor. Very convenient, but I need to have the vent cleaned every 2-3 years. I think I went 5 last time and that wasn't a good move. 

That sounds like our condo's setup. I moved here in late 2012 and I recall that building management was having the vents cleaned right around then, when I was having the inspection done (good timing, that). But I don't think management has had it done since, even though I've inquired about it several times. It worries me and I cannot understand why no one else gives a shit!
 

Quote

Me too. Hot water heaters are known to pour water out when they break. Mine is in the basement. No basement would then mean first floor. 

Ours is on the second floor (in a large closet that shares a wall with the closet the washer and dryer are in)...as evidenced by the ceiling repair in our first-floor bedroom. Nothing too major, at least. But I sure did love buying a new water heater on my own birthday last year! 

No matter where ours was, it would be upstairs to someone; our condo is two floors, but it's above another that is also two floors (one ground level, and the other a basement).
 

Quote

Ooh - I'll admit to being a wee bit anal about spreadsheets.  Mine were specfuckingtacular, always.  

Same here! While my job is words and copy, and has zero to do with numbers and formulas, I still use Excel to organize the different copy "elements" that designers need for their layout pages; makes it much easier for them to follow and for me to proof later. I absolutely pains me to look at the spreadsheets sent to me from another department (I need the info in them to make my own). Seriously, I not only have to print them out, but I have to first add borders to the cells...and still need a ruler to read and follow them! That department needs a damn lesson.
 

Quote

However, while we're on the subject of Word, I encountered a pet peeve yet again at work this week. Why on earth would someone create a freaking template on which multiple documents will be based, and create it with spell check and grammar check disabled? What is the thinking there? You want employees to have to find spelling mistakes the old-fashioned way?

Haha, as a copy editor, YES! People blindly depend so much on Word's horrendous grammar/spell-check functions (and Google Docs is right up there with it) that they think I am wrong because "but Word said...!" I actually have a list of Word's misguided attempts (and the list is in Word, haha!). That said, though, I do think that it's helpful as a reminder to check stuff with the red or green squiggle; don't necessarily believe Word's suggestions, mind you, but at least take a look (which authors should be doing regardless, before they send their stuff to me).

Also, two spaces after a sentence is an old typesetting issue; now, the "extra" space fucks up line breaks and kerning (depending on what justification is set) in Adobe publishing formats. As far as I know, Word doesn't automatically deem this an error.

Edited May 6, 2017 by TattleTeeny

[theredhead77]

On the topic of spreadsheets, I HATE pivot tables. I hate them so much!!!!! My boss loves them and insists they are used for everything. I'm sure they have their time and place but a weekly report that is literally me counting how many eBusiness touches our customer service centers made is not one of them. It's literally Cell A = name and Cell B = total (and the totals are small, less than 10).

[Moose135]

3 hours ago, MargeGunderson said:

I will add to your Word frustration: 2 spaces after punctuation. My former manager who learned typing could not stop putting 2 spaces after all punctuation.

I still do that.  And I'll keep using Oxford commas until you pry them from my cold, dead hand. ;-)

 

3 minutes ago, theredhead77 said:

On the topic of spreadsheets, I HATE pivot tables. I hate them so much!!!!!

I probably use them more than I need to...

A hundred years ago...OK, so thirty years ago...I was out of work, the local library had a computer that patrons could use, and I learned just enough Lotus 1-2-3 to bluff my way through the test at a temp agency.  They sent me on a job in the advertising department at the local newspaper.  Eventually, I was hired by the paper, and spent nearly 20 years there.  I think I was one of the last holdouts to move to Excel, but over the years, I've become quite proficient at it.

Edited May 6, 2017 by Moose135

[bilgistic]

3 hours ago, MargeGunderson said:

@BookWoman56, I will add to your Word frustration: 2 spaces after punctuation. My former manager who learned typing could not stop putting 2 spaces after all punctuation. I had to correct it on all of her documents, along with the other issues you mentioned. I'm still reformatting documents that she wrote 2 years after she left.

My 35-year-old boss puts two spaces after sentences. There's no way he learned to type on a manual (or even electric) typewriter like I did (he would've been school-aged in the 1990s-2000s), so there's no reason for those shenanigans. My 28-year-old coworker uses one space. I learned to used one space once widely available word processing came along when I was in college.

[NutMeg]

19 hours ago, walnutqueen said:

Ooh - I'll admit to being a wee bit anal about spreadsheets.  Mine were specfuckingtacular, always.  And since I was also the Queen of Excel, back in my day, they also contained AMAZING formulas (including @IF statements and @LOOKUP tables), as well as legible color coded headers and footnotes, suitable for printing (and binding, if not framing!!!).  Even management idiots could decipher them.  I still reminisce upon them fondly, because they were a great source of pride and were coveted by all who saw them.  :-D

So, yeah, ineffectual spreadsheets itch my arse.   :-)

That reminds me of an old story, or should I say one that happened a long time ago. I had just moved to a new job, as the specialist of some equity markets. I was sitting next to guy who had a very basic issue with an Excel spreadsheet, so I helped him out. And afterwards (I mean the 4 month until my visa and all other issues for my expat posting came though), I was the one EVERYONE on that floor contacted if they had an Excel question. Because that guy built me up to everyone as an expert. The weirdest thing is that most of the time I was able to help and it took only like 2 minutes, and gained me a lot of goodwill that made people trust me more in what was my real area of expertise.

[NutMeg]

2 hours ago, TattleTeeny said:

Haha, as a copy editor, YES! People blindly depend so much on Word's horrendous grammar/spell-check functions (and Google Docs is right up there with it) that they think I am wrong because "but Word said...!" I actually have a list of Word's misguided attempts (and the list is in Word, haha!). That said, though, I do think that it's helpful as a reminder to check stuff with the red or green squiggle; don't necessarily believe Word's suggestions, mind you, but at least take a look (which authors should be doing regardless, before they send their stuff to me).

I'm a freelancer working with various project managers. There's a new one who has such a bad spelling that I suspect he's not even running any spelling check. Still, I had to laugh when one of his messages included "bare with me". Dude, I like you, and I may appear "cool", but no way am I going to bare with you until I know if I like you THAT way. Sheesh. 

[TattleTeeny]

Haha, oh my god, the stuff I could commiserate with you about! We've got content writers who know their stuff very well, but not how to get it into writing like adults--or even sixth-graders for that matter. Sometimes it's funny but other times, I rage...like when they flat-out will not check the spellings of official names (products, places, people, whatever); they think they don't have to because I am there! Try explaining to amateur "writers" that that is not my job and in fact takes away from the time I need to do my job!

[walnutqueen]

1 hour ago, Moose135 said:

I still do that.  And I'll keep using Oxford commas until you pry them from my cold, dead hand. ;-)

 

I probably use them more than I need to...

A hundred years ago...OK, so thirty years ago...I was out of work, the local library had a computer that patrons could use, and I learned just enough Lotus 1-2-3 to bluff my way through the test at a temp agency.  They sent me on a job in the advertising department at the local newspaper.  Eventually, I was hired by the paper, and spent nearly 20 years there.  I think I was one of the last holdouts to move to Excel, but over the years, I've become quite proficient at it.

Lotus 123 was a snap for me, since I'd already taught myself 3EZ Pieces (?) on my first job computer (which I believe was a state of the art Apple IIe).  Yes, I'm older than dirt.  :-)

 

1 hour ago, NutMeg said:

That reminds me of an old story, or should I say one that happened a long time ago. I had just moved to a new job, as the specialist of some equity markets. I was sitting next to guy who had a very basic issue with an Excel spreadsheet, so I helped him out. And afterwards (I mean the 4 month until my visa and all other issues for my expat posting came though), I was the one EVERYONE on that floor contacted if they had an Excel question. Because that guy built me up to everyone as an expert. The weirdest thing is that most of the time I was able to help and it took only like 2 minutes, and gained me a lot of goodwill that made people trust me more in what was my real area of expertise.

Same thing happened to me, but what peeved me was that every answer/solution could easily be found by just using the Excel Help function - which is how I learned to do all the cool shit.  My co-workers were probably just too lazy to READ THE INSTRUCTIONS.  :-)

[DeLurker]

23 hours ago, JTMacc99 said:

@DeLurker, did that house have baseboard hot water heat?  And if so, was the boiler also in the attic? 

I'm not familiar with either of these things.  All the houses I've ever lived in had a self contained hot water heater.

My water heater is in a closet in the laundry room - on the first floor and with the dryer closest to the exterior wall so the shortest route to vent.  We've got not basement nor crawlspace in this house.

At my house in So Cal, the water heater was originally in the kitchen with the washer and dryer, but it was a teensy house anyway.  When that water heater finally gave up the ghost, I had a tankless water heater installed.  It was lovely.

15 hours ago, ParadoxLost said:

I've decided to re-do my kitchen and with it set off a chain reaction of peeves.  A peeve reaction

I'm breaking out in hives just reading this!  If I have too many choices, I can no longer tell what I like and what I don't.  I end up hating everything.  This explains why there are no prints in my wardrobe and the majority of clothes are white, black, grey or blue jeans.

[bilgistic]

46 minutes ago, forumfish said:

I hope I haven't offended anyone here. I'm a graphic designer with a BFA and 30 years' worth of experience, and learned my trade before desktop computers were a "thing" -- I've done paste-up the old-fashioned way, I've done direct-to-press.

I was on the newspaper staff in high school. We literally printed (very early Apple computer), cut and pasted articles to a big print-ready sheet (don't recall the name of it). We also used adhesive black tape to divide articles.

[Bastet]

8 hours ago, MargeGunderson said:

My former manager who learned typing could not stop putting 2 spaces after all punctuation.

I can't either.  It's how I learned (which, yes, was on a typewriter), it's deeply ingrained, and it doesn't cause me problems, so I'm not going to try re-training my brain now.

4 hours ago, Moose135 said:

And I'll keep using Oxford commas until you pry them from my cold, dead hand. ;-)

On that, I'm a bit wonky.  I use them probably 95 percent of the time, but sometimes don't -- for reasons unknown even to me.

Edited May 6, 2017 by Bastet

[harrie]

On 5/4/2017 at 9:26 AM, JTMacc99 said:

My laundry closet is dead smack in the middle of the second floor. Very convenient, but I need to have the vent cleaned every 2-3 years. I think I went 5 last time and that wasn't a good move. 

 

6 hours ago, TattleTeeny said:

That sounds like our condo's setup. I moved here in late 2012 and I recall that building management was having the vents cleaned right around then, when I was having the inspection done (good timing, that). But I don't think management has had it done since, even though I've inquired about it several times. It worries me and I cannot understand why no one else gives a shit!
 

 

I live in a townhome condo - bedrooms on top floor, living space on middle floor, and garage and spare room on bottom floor.  Our laundry setup is on the top floor, which makes sense because that's where the clothes are, but you're right -- the venting is a pain in the butt.  The vent is about 10-12 feet long and bends in a place or two because it runs between the top floor's floor and the middle floor's ceiling. 

A neighbor had two - yes, two - house fires that started in the venting due to lint buildup. Because of that, I have the vent cleaned every year. Our association should have the vents cleaned on a regular basis; but I think they gave up because the last time they tried to organize vent cleanings, the resident response was dismal. (And to be fair, the week that the association picks to have it done isn't always going to fit into the schedules of 70+ families.)  Instead, I just cough up the $150 or so and consider it peace of mind insurance.

 

3 hours ago, Moose135 said:

I still do that.  And I'll keep using Oxford commas until you pry them from my cold, dead hand. ;-)

 

Same here. 

 

@forumfish, I love the Tufte reference!

Edited May 6, 2017 by harrie

[TattleTeeny]

Quote

A neighbor had two - yes, two - house fires that started in the venting due to lint buildup. Because of that, I have the vent cleaned every year. Our association should have the vents cleaned on a regular basis; but I think they gave up because the last time they tried to organize vent cleanings, the resident response was dismal. (And to be fair, the week that the association picks to have it done isn't always going to fit into the schedules of 70+ families.)  Instead, I just cough up the$150 or so and consider it peace of mind insurance.

Our place has one manager, who also manages several other properties, and one person on the condo board right now. We're like an island unto ourselves over here, and I have no delusions that the fucking vents will ever be cleaned again. I periodically unscrew the one inside of the dryer, climb on a chair, get my head upside down in that shit, and get at it with the vacuum (and regularly do the half-ass version of just poking the skinny attachment down in there). I also don't leave the dryer running when I'm not home. Still, I worry. Maybe I should have this done myself...still, that protects me not at all from adjacent people's errant lint!

[harrie]

Hopefully, you and your neighbors have firewalls between your units.  I was told we do, but (luckily), they've not yet been put to the test. 

[TattleTeeny]

I think these building are less than 20 years old, so I assume they do have that. It stinks that maintenance is so lax here--there are only maybe 30 units and everything is generally very nice, in a simple "no one here is filthy rich" way. Plus, the layout of my place is pretty cool; it was the reason I chose it over other places with more amenities but also the "standard" floor plan.

[bubbls]

Quote

 And I'll keep using Oxford commas until you pry them from my cold, dead hand. ;-)

Me too. I'm no grammar expert, but the other way looks so awkward to me. I try to do it and can't. I just can't. 

[janestclair]

I still use two spaces after a period.  It's how I learned.  There's too much muscle memory from 20+ years of typing to change now.   I also go back and forth on the Oxford comma.  Sometimes I use one, sometimes I don't.  

I teach high school, and I can tell you that most of my kids can use the basics of Word and Power Point, but just the basics, as in, they know how to type and change the font.  Anything even a little more advanced, they're lost.  Excel is a mystery to them.  I blew their minds when I showed them simple functions like sum and average.  They have no idea how to graph with it, so I had to show them that too.  I have no idea what, if anything, they learn in computer class these days.  I didn't learn any of what I know in school, just figured it out on my own.  They don't seem to have the capability to figure it out on their own.  Either that, or they just flat out don't have the desire to learn.  I'm not sure which.  

[topanga]

7 hours ago, Moose135 said:

I still do that.  And I'll keep using Oxford commas until you pry them from my cold, dead hand. ;-)

Ha. Me, too. The only time I don't is if I'm sending a Tweet and need another character. 

 

On 5/5/2017 at 4:54 PM, ennui said:

walnutqueen, I'm also pretty darn good with Excel. I'm finding that younger generations don't know Excel and they don't know Word, which is crazy. How can they compete for jobs?

 

4 hours ago, bilgistic said:

I was on the newspaper staff in high school. We literally printed (very early Apple computer), cut and pasted articles to a big print-ready sheet (don't recall the name of it). We also used adhesive black tape to divide articles

According to my high-schooler son, most of their papers and reports are written on Google Docs and emailed directly to their teachers. But yeah, they still should know Word. And he says they do learn Excel. 

And since we're going down memory lane, when I was in high school, I edited videos for my teachers using two VCRs. I have no idea how I did it, but it was actually fun. 

[TattleTeeny]

Google Docs is a pretty similar setup to Word; if you can use one, you can use the other. The only thing I noticed was that it's missing the function that allows you to skip to a page--there was no field at the bottom to enter a number. That was a real pain in the ass while I was editing a 250-page book! It also won't let you right-click with a mouse to copy/cut/paste; you have to use keyboard shortcuts (also a pain for my clicky self).

[JTMacc99]

I learned how to use spreadsheet software on an Apple IIc in high school. Because I volunteered to keep the stats for our fantasy baseball league. Which was done by typing them in each Sunday when the printed newspaper published the entire leagues stats. 

Heh. 

The neat thing is that that initiative to figure it out on my own put me ahead of the game for a career that has always been spreadsheet intensive. 

Edited May 7, 2017 by JTMacc99

[TattleTeeny]

Again, I don't use it for the numbers stuff, but my spreadsheets are the most orderly! That other department, ugh...all inconsistent-looking and they think they need a new tab for EVERYTHING!

[theredhead77]

Pet peeve: people who complain you never invite them anywhere but conveniently forget they don't respond to open invites or always flake and are no longer invited. Oh, and also they never include me.

[Quof]

According to @WhatTheFFacts, "Studies have found that people who complain tend to live longer – Releasing stress and tension increases immunity and boosts health."

Also, "Women who gossip are more likely to live longer - Gossiping releases progesterone, which helps relieve stress and makes you feel good."   

I'll be here for at least another 100  years.  And my mother will live to at least 200.

[TattleTeeny]

Well...I finally complained to a big boss on Friday about some stuff* that's been going on for a while at work, and I feel actually physically better right now!

* With the bad Excel department, though my complaint wasn't about that...or not exactly, at least; actually Excel does play a role in it, hahahhahaaa!

Edited May 7, 2017 by TattleTeeny

[StatisticalOutlier]

On 5/6/2017 at 4:56 AM, riley702 said:

I remember years ago on a driving vacation out west, there were official signs saying X marks the spot, with x's representing fatalities. And in really dangerous spots, there might be 3 or 4 signs jammed in together.

I like that.  One of my problems with roadside memorials is that you don't know the circumstances behind them.  While a lot of them are in places that look dangerous, I've seen plenty just on a straight stretch of road, and I wonder if it was a drunk driver who ran off the road and killed himself, and didn't kill anybody else only by luck.  Or maybe did kill people, and only the drunk driver's family put up a memorial. 

[Qoass]

So on the two spaces thing... does that mean only one space after a colon too? Retraining my thumbs is going to be a Herculean task.

[BookWoman56]

Yes, the standard rule now is one space after a period, colon, etc. There is information available about why the spacing has reverted back to one space from two spaces. Essentially, prior to the invention of the typewriter, typesetters used proportional fonts and two spaces were not needed to see the break between sentences. With typewriters, though, each letter was the same width (pica vs elite; one was 10 characters/inch and one was 12 characters/inch), so two spaces were used to make the break between sentences a little easier to see. However, with word processing programs, we're back to proportional fonts again and thus no need for two spaces. Essentially, using two spaces was a deviation from typesetting standards, and that deviation has now been eliminated (at least by most publishers). I first became aware of the change in the mid to late 1990s, when working for a publishing company. Word came down from corporate headquarters to start using only one space after periods, etc. At the time, paper prices were soaring and my thought was that for publishing books, all those extra spaces may have been adding up to extra pages. So I thought for a long time that the driving force behind the change was reducing the number of pages needed for print materials. FWIW, it took me not all that long to adjust to inserting only one space after a period. I will admit to being amused by people who insist they can't possibly make that adjustment, because if you want your text to look the way it did when you were using a typewriter, then you should stick to Courier font in addition to using two spaces after a period.

Edited May 8, 2017 by BookWoman56

[DeLurker]

I will blissfully continue to ignore all the rules of grammar and punctuation - old and new.

[MrSmith]

14 minutes ago, BookWoman56 said:

we're back to proportional fonts again and thus no need for two spaces.

I suspect that this change was also helped along by the fact that HTML doesn't support multiple spaces with no intervening non-space characters, unless you use HTML character equivalents like " ". And, of course, those are only available to web developers/designers and not available to the visitor/user (most of the time). I personally prefer the look of two spaces after periods, but it's a hassle and I'm lazy.

[topanga]

2 hours ago, DeLurker said:

I will blissfully continue to ignore all the rules of grammar and punctuation - old and new.

And you call yourself an American? (Are you American, BTW?)

[Bastet]

3 hours ago, BookWoman56 said:

I will admit to being amused by people who insist they can't possibly make that adjustment,

For me, it's more accurately described as I can't possibly bring myself to care enough to make that adjustment.  I don't think it's particularly noticeable whether one uses one or two spaces; I certainly never notice it here, and I have to make a point of looking to see how many of the pleadings I read use one space and how many use two -- it's evenly split, and never a topic of feedback from clerks, so if the judges don't care, switching is just not something on which I'm going to spend whatever time it would take me to learn to do a daily task differently than I've been doing it for decades.

[Katy M]

5 hours ago, BookWoman56 said:

I will admit to being amused by people who insist they can't possibly make that adjustment, because if you want your text to look the way it did when you were using a typewriter, then you should stick to Courier font in addition to using two spaces after a period.

Typing is something you do by habit, and period space space is just what's in my head.  Kind of like muscle memory.

[ganesh]

2 hours ago, Bastet said:

I don't think it's particularly noticeable whether one uses one or two spaces; I certainly never notice it here, and I have to make a point of looking to see how many of the pleadings I read use one space and how many use two -- it's evenly split, and never a topic of feedback from clerks, so if the judges don't care, switching is just not something on which I'm going to spend whatever time it would take me to learn to do a daily task differently than I've been doing it for decades.

This is a big issue when you've got a page limit for proposals or something like that. Squeezing everything into 10 pages with margin and font, and size limits; you optimize space as much as you can.

[MargeGunderson]

Wow, I didn't expect strong opinions about this issue! I might as well come clean: I also dislike the Oxford comma. 

[ABay]

Monster!

[Quof]

Quote

This is a big issue when you've got a page limit for proposals or something like that

A colleague was once writing an appellate factum on a very complex issue.  Even when the Court allowed his motion to extend the usual page limit, he knew he couldn't fit everything in, so he got very creative with fonts, line spacing and margins - just a little bit, so that you wouldn't really notice at first glance, but he managed to squeeze in couple of extra pages of content.  He was very proud of his ingenuity.

[Moose135]

10 minutes ago, MargeGunderson said:

I also dislike the Oxford comma. 

Heretic!

[partofme]

I had to google what an Oxford comma is.  I've never used one in my life, I wasn't taught that way and they don't look right to me.

[MrSmith]

@partofme and @MargeGunderson

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/us/oxford-comma-lawsuit.html?_r=0

You're welcome. :D

[partofme]

On the face of it I think it is very clear that the drivers should lose, however I am very pro-labor, and willing to overlook it.

[3pwood]

My favorite example of the confusion that can result from omitting the serial (aka Oxford) comma is this dedication of a young author's book:  "I'd like to thank my parents, Ayn Rand and God".

[MrSmith]

Wonderful, @3pwood!

Edited May 9, 2017 by MrSmith

[harrie]

3 hours ago, Katy M said:

Typing is something you do by habit, and period space space is just what's in my head.  Kind of like muscle memory.

For me it's totally a muscle memory thing.  I hit the period and then the space bar twice.  I've tried to do the one space, and mentally it's like "No, thumb, no!" And before I realize it, there are two spaces after that period (or colon). 

[auntlada]

I can usually tell when there are double spaces, but that's part of what I do for a living (proofing documents). I also can usually tell if the type is a slightly larger or smaller point size. Most people can't do that, however.

[TattleTeeny]

I can tell too. Often, the first thing I do before editing anything is find & replace two spaces for one.

[BookWoman56]

7 hours ago, Bastet said:

For me, it's more accurately described as I can't possibly bring myself to care enough to make that adjustment.  I don't think it's particularly noticeable whether one uses one or two spaces; I certainly never notice it here, and I have to make a point of looking to see how many of the pleadings I read use one space and how many use two -- it's evenly split, and never a topic of feedback from clerks, so if the judges don't care, switching is just not something on which I'm going to spend whatever time it would take me to learn to do a daily task differently than I've been doing it for decades.

In your situation, it makes no difference.  However, my amusement on this issue has mostly been in workplaces where the corporate style guide mandated one space after a period, and yet various people insisted they couldn't possibly learn how to use only one space.  Maybe it's just my perverse sense of humor, but it strikes me as somewhat funny that people who have learned in their lifetime to use computers, to use smartphones, etc. will absolutely insist they cannot change to using one space. A former manager was one of those who insisted he had learned two spaces when taking typing in high school, that people his age (and mine) were used to seeing two spaces, and couldn't possibly adjust to having only one space, and so he was going to overrule what the corporate style guide said. He maintained that stance until I was writing a style guide specifically for our department, and included the note that contrary to the corporate style guide, we were to use two spaces after a period. Because our department style guide would be published on an intranet site where essentially anybody in the company could see it, he decided that the number of spaces after a period no longer mattered that much to him. I don't really care what other people do in terms of spacing until they want me to defy corporate standards based on their whim. My basic feeling on the subject is that I wasn't born knowing how to type and had to learn to type using two spaces after a period. So, learning to type with only one space wasn't any more difficult than learning two spaces; it took maybe a month. Of course, there was the motivation that if I continued to use two spaces while writing text, I would then have to do a search and replace for spaces after a period.

[ratgirlagogo]

7 hours ago, Bastet said:

For me, it's more accurately described as I can't possibly bring myself to care enough to make that adjustment.

That would be my position as well.  So far noone has ever suggested I make the adjustment and until somebody does I don't care.  

[Bastet]

35 minutes ago, BookWoman56 said:

In your situation, it makes no difference.  However, my amusement on this issue has mostly been in workplaces where the corporate style guide mandated one space after a period, and yet various people insisted they couldn't possibly learn how to use only one space.

Ah, I see what you're saying now, and, yes, if we're talking about people specifically being asked to make the change fretting that they can't possibly do it, that's different.  As you said, we've all learned to do a tremendous number of new things over the years.  It's probably easier to learn something altogether new than to adjust to doing something already ingrained but in a different way, but still.

[TattleTeeny]

I think that, unless you're working with a publisher of some kind, no one would care.