A piece of good news for all the Grammar Nazis out there! Microsoft has finally announced a new update regarding a long ongoing debate. The world’s top used writing, editing, and data collecting software has declared leaving two spaces after a period as an error. Many Microsoft users constantly had long-running debates over the topic, which often led to heated arguments. Half the users declared one space after a full stop to be the correct way of typing, whereas the other half debated and decided over two spaces left after a full stop to be the correct way of writing a document. Due to this lingering debate, many research studies have also been uptake by different universities, to try to come to a proper conclusion. A study was done at Skidmore College in 2018, where samples were collected through surveys from different students or different departments. The samples were then analyzed in-depth, which revealed that a majority of students preferred two spaces after a full stop. Even then the debate saw no means of ends and continued.
However, Microsoft has made the changes and put the update in favor of the former half. The company has already started testing the changes made on the desktop version of Word, with more updates to iOS and Android apps coming soon. According to The Verge, the writing software, Microsoft Word, has declared its editor function will be incorporating the new feature very soon. It will flag the two spaces after a dot in documents and highlight it with the grammar correcting blue underline. From the new update onwards, it will be grammatically incorrect to leave two spaces after a full stop. Hence, people who are used to their habit of leaving two spaces after full stops in their documents should adopt to the new grammar preference set by Microsoft word, otherwise, they will constantly have to correct the error through the software’s corrector, which can be quite frustrating.
The possibility of a new update, however, has sparked quite a lot of responses, both negative and positive, on the famous social media platform, Twitter. A lot of criticism was noted from a fair percentage of Tweeters, who jumped at the company for the abrupt changes. Many tweets were exchanged with Twitter users who were excited at the new update.
It is reasonable to say that Twitter users who left two spaces, instead of one, while writing their documents, will just have to adjust to the new preferences set by the writing software.
Read next: Microsoft’s New Suggestions Tool Can Help People Write Better
However, Microsoft has made the changes and put the update in favor of the former half. The company has already started testing the changes made on the desktop version of Word, with more updates to iOS and Android apps coming soon. According to The Verge, the writing software, Microsoft Word, has declared its editor function will be incorporating the new feature very soon. It will flag the two spaces after a dot in documents and highlight it with the grammar correcting blue underline. From the new update onwards, it will be grammatically incorrect to leave two spaces after a full stop. Hence, people who are used to their habit of leaving two spaces after full stops in their documents should adopt to the new grammar preference set by Microsoft word, otherwise, they will constantly have to correct the error through the software’s corrector, which can be quite frustrating.
A debate for the ages finally settled. Where do you stand? ⚔️ https://t.co/A3xvC4OEMV— Microsoft 365 (@Microsoft365) April 24, 2020
The possibility of a new update, however, has sparked quite a lot of responses, both negative and positive, on the famous social media platform, Twitter. A lot of criticism was noted from a fair percentage of Tweeters, who jumped at the company for the abrupt changes. Many tweets were exchanged with Twitter users who were excited at the new update.
I will continue to two-space and Microsoft can't stop me. 🙃🤪— Dwayne Natwick (@DwayneNcloud) April 24, 2020
— James Payne (@paynejames) April 24, 2020
— 🇨🇦 Joe Passmore 🖖🏻 (@JoePassmoreIII) April 24, 2020
It is reasonable to say that Twitter users who left two spaces, instead of one, while writing their documents, will just have to adjust to the new preferences set by the writing software.
Read next: Microsoft’s New Suggestions Tool Can Help People Write Better
