美国有线新闻 CNN 微软将Word编辑英文句号后两个空格标记为错误（在线收听）

A century ago Remington, Royal and Underwood were all famous brands of what? Razors, watches, hats or typewriters. All of these companies were famous for producing typewriters which were invented in the 1800s.

一个世纪以前，雷明顿、皇家和安德伍德是什么产品的著名品牌？剃须刀、手表、帽子还是打字机？上述所有公司都以生产19世纪发明的打字机而闻名。

Back in the day when those typewriters were widely used around the world, people were taught to put two spaces in between sentences. So after you hit the period key you'd hit the spacebar twice. Here's why. Each letter printed from a typewriter took up the same amount of space, so adding the extra space after a sentence made the transition between sentences easier to read. Today though, the letters and most of the fonts we read or print have different widths. An "E" for example takes up more space than an "I". This is also intended to make text easier to read so some argue that the extra space at the end of a sentence isn't necessary anymore and several style guides from MLA to AP to the U.S. Government Printing Office suggest using only one space after a period.

在这些打字机在全世界广泛使用的那段时期，人们被教导在句子之间留出两个空格。所以，在你按下句号之后，还要按两次空格键。下面来解释一下原因。打字机打印的每个字母都占用相同大小的空间，因此，在句子后面添加空格可以使句子之间的转换更易于阅读。而今天，我们阅读或打印的字母和大多数字体都有不同的宽度。比如，E占用的空间多于I。这也是为了让文本更容易阅读，因此有人认为不再需要句子末尾处的多余空格，美国现代语言协会、美国联合通讯社和美国政府印刷局等机构发布的式样导引均建议，在句号后只放一个空格。

But if you're old school or you were taught to use two spaces or you just like it that way, Microsoft will attack you. The company's newest version of Word will put one of those blue, squiggly lines indicating you've made a mistake after each double space following a period. Of course you could tell Word to ignore it or just turn the feature off but who would have thought there'd be a war over spacing in the typewriter space.

但如果你是老派风格，或被教导使用两个空格，或是你就是喜欢这样，那微软会责难你。该公司最新版Word将用蓝色波浪线标示，指出你在每个句号后加两个空格是错误。当然，你可以让Word忽略这种情况，并关闭这个功能，但谁会想到打字机空格的间距会引发一场战争呢？