On Sat, Nov 24, 2012 at 09:01:43PM +0000, Tony's unattended mail wrote: > On 2012-11-24, Patrick Shanahan <[email protected]> wrote: > > * Peter Davis <[email protected]> [11-24-12 15:09]: > >> > >> On 11/24/12 12:49 PM, Derek Martin wrote: > >> > >> >The convention for e-mail is 72 characters. > >> No. That was the convention. Currently, I don't believe there is one, > >> "convention" in this case meaning the predominant or prevailing practice. > > > > no, convention is: standard, standard behavior, standard usage, > > time-honored practice, tradition, collective agreement > > By that rationale horseback is the convention for commuting to work.
It is *a* convention... of the past. It is not THE convention, which implies current-ness. As best as I can tell, the overwhelming majority of e-mail I receive still conforms to 72-character line lengths. It's still what people recommend the most, and it's still what most clients configure by default. I'd say that makes it the standard. > Very traditional and "time-honored" much longer than cars and public > transport. I suspect more humans have ridden beasts than machines > even counting every driver today. That's an interesting question, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that you're wrong, just based on the fact that the human population is currently about 10x what it was 200 years ago, and historically most people, i.e. the average laborer, could not afford horses. In the modern day first world countries, most "average workers" do own cars, and that's been true for quite a number of years. That's a lot of people... Riding horses, or horse-drawn carriages, was something limited primarily to the military and the gentry, and even then the military mostly relied on foot soldiers. In the United States and much of Europe, automobiles have been more common than riding horses since about the 1920's. In large cities, even before that: http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/578.html -- Derek D. Martin http://www.pizzashack.org/ GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02 -=-=-=-=- This message is posted from an invalid address. Replying to it will result in undeliverable mail due to spam prevention. Sorry for the inconvenience.
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