[Noisebridge-discuss] [drama] also [actual action] Re: Cynthia and "Asian" Reference

[Gopiballava Flaherty]

On Feb 4, 2012, at 5:25 PM, Joshua Juran wrote:
> In first grade, we had a spelling quiz whose word #19 of 20 was "Hanukkah".  The correct spelling, of course, is in Hebrew, and any representation in English is merely a transliteration.  Since /h/ and /ch/ are not the same sound, I considered "Chanukah" to be more accurate and submitted that as my answer.  Sure enough, it was marked wrong, and when I tried to explain to my teacher that at worst it was arbitrary and at best my spelling was superior, she fell back on "Well, that's the way it is in the book."

Oh, you reminded me of something vaguely similar that happened to me. We were measuring things with rulers. I got marked wrong. Turned out my fancy-looking ruler was rather inaccurate. I pointed out to the teacher that I read my ruler perfectly correctly.

Of course, at least in my case you could say that I should have used better tools. But this was second or third grade, and I didn't understand about calibrating measuring tools.

> Apple Mail and Gmail's Web interface encourage top-posting, but nothing stops you from editing the reply as you wish.  Is iOS Mail different?

I like using a .sig. It puts it in the wrong place - at the top. Cut and paste aren't that hard, but they're a lot harder than with a keyboard/trackpad. Perhaps I'll just turn off my .sig. But I do like the iPad reference in it, not because I want everybody to know I have an iPad but because I'd like to remind them that I'm not being short on purpose, I just don't have a keyboard.

>> PS: You added an extra space after your first period.
> 
> Again, it's deliberate.

PS: You skipped the extra space after your second period in that email :P

> I concede that double-spacing is one of the practices discouraged by the book The Mac is Not a Typewriter.  But that suggests that the practice *is* appropriate for typewritten prose, and the text I write in email (using a fixed-width font) more closely resembles that than it does a published document (as on the Web, where text in HTML is in fact space-condensed).

I thought that the reasoning was based on legibility with mono-spaced fonts on old style typewriters, but I am pretty much just guessing. I don't find either way to really matter for legibility. I really only care when I'm trying to find something to complain about :)