[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by indieFan

2. No paragraph breaks. Or, perhaps, too many blank lines between one paragraph and the next. (Too bad there is no way to indent effectively.)

True enough, but if you want to indent both sides (as if inserting a long quotation in a document that doesn't support [quote][/quote] tags), there's always this: [indent][/indent].

Originally Posted by indieFan

9. The use of "well" versus "good". I was mortified when I overheard someone at a major university say "The Chancellor did a well job of recruiting for next year."

"Well", or "swell"? Hopefully it was the latter colloquialism.

Originally Posted by indieFan

10. For those of us that hate being politically correct, the accepted term for a single person in writing is to use "he". (i.e., Can you find out if he knows the answer?)

You've hinted at why it's not actually universally accepted. Users of English haven't yet settled on appropriate pronouns for some situations—at present, the best bet is to use whatever format you think will convey your intention most clearly. If gender plays no important role in the discussion, it might be sufficiently clear to use "he". If gender could be relevant, you might want to avoid using the masculine pronoun to mean the neuter, and instead be specific. Sometimes, when there's little possibility of confusing the singular with the plural, it makes sense to use a singular "they". (This has been universally understood for 500 years, but is still occasionally condemned.)

Originally Posted by indieFan

14. If you have several issues that you are putting into a single post, consider using numbers for the following reasons: Easier reading of the post and easier referencing in responses to the post. Also hit the "Return" or "Enter" key before typing the next number. (Review this post for an example.)

There's another way—vBulletin supports numbering: [list=1][*]List item[/list]. (You can also pass A, a, I and i to the list tag, for other numbering styles.)

Originally Posted by indieFan

20. When naming a book, magazine, or movie, the title shall be underlined.

Only if your name is Strunk or White, and the year is 1910. Underlining in printed works to indicate a title is an artifact of the period when typewriters were used to produce some printed matter—roughly between the era of movable type and the era of word processing. (Most typewriters were not equipped with italic cartridges, so underlining was used instead, in the manner of some handwritten styles.) Conventionally, italics are used for this purpose whenever practical.

Similarly, two spaces after the period (full stop) is a typewriter convention, and is not useful in modern word processing software that adjusts spacing automatically. If a differently-sized space needs to be typographically encoded, the usual way to do it is with one of several special space characters. (Unfortunately, this forum seems to have support for those characters disabled.) In any event, the question of whether two spaces are an appropriate substitute for a wide space in this forum depends on personal preference and the font settings.

Originally Posted by indieFan

P.S. How much extra credit do I get for the proper use of a semi-colon (; ) rather than a colon (: )? (Extra spaces required to prevent smilies from showing up.

All you need is [noparse]:)[/noparse].