# Behaviours still done though they're no longer needed **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 21, 2020, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257 "2020-04-21T08:35:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/142 "2020-04-28T15:19:23Z")
Bert Nobbins, I notice that you’re British. Americans usually put periods after initials in names and after Mr., Mrs., Ms., and Dr. They also usually put periods in such acronyms as U.S., U.K., and U.S.S.R. Britons usually don’t put periods there. Also, are you deliberately writing “period” instead of “full stop” as you usually would because you know that most of the posters here are American? ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/143 "2020-04-28T15:24:00Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Bert Nobbins, I notice that you’re British. Americans usually put periods after initials in names and after Mr., Mrs., Ms., and Dr. They also usually put periods in such acronyms as U.S., U.K., and U.S.S.R. Britons usually don’t put periods there. Also, are you deliberately writing “period” instead of “full stop” as you usually would because you know that most of the posters here are American? Im American and I usually only use periods to end sentences. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/144 "2020-04-28T15:41:49Z")
That’s fine, but again it’s usually true that Americans put periods in and Britons don’t. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/145 "2020-04-28T15:42:57Z")
And both usually put an asterisk in I’m. ---
**Author:** ![madsircool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madsircool/32/3432_2.png) [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/146 "2020-04-28T15:43:36Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > That’s fine, but again it’s usually true that Americans put periods in and Britons don’t. I think its true for older Americans. Younger Americans, used to writing on the internet, are much more laissez faire with their grammar. ---
**Author:** ![jaycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat/32/3015_2.png) [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/147 "2020-04-28T16:18:23Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > I’ve published or edited books (both fiction and non-), textbooks, workbooks, online educational materials, manuals, magazine articles, and goodness knows what-all else. > > Word count is very common. In educational publishing in particular, line count can often be a valuable measure. Once in a while I’m asked for a character count (or given a min/max for that). I have never been asked for a sentence count. I’m also curious under what circumstances this would be an important determination of anything. I share Ulf’s background and his puzzlement. I’ve never heard of a sentence count either. I wonder if [this sentence from Proust](https://ask.metafilter.com/35008/What-is-Prousts-longest-sentence) carries the same weight as [John 11:35](https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/John-11-35/). ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/148 "2020-04-28T18:30:45Z")
> [@Quercus](#): > > Another cooking thing is heating up/scalding milk before using it in baking or puddings/sauces. If your milk is pastuerized, it’s already been heated up enough to denature the proteins that interfere with bread or pudding, so you don’t need to do it yourself. Hmm, does that mean I don’t have to do it to make yogurt, either? I was thinking that ultra-pasteurized milk should be clean enough. > [@Quercus](#): > > Which means the traditional ‘tempering’ method of adding egg yolks to milk (heat the milk, add a little bit to the egg yoilks, stir, add a little more, etc) is unnecessary. If you’re making pudding (or creme anglais or anything else with milk thickened with egg yolks) there’s no reason not to just add all the yoilks to the cold milk and heat them up together. Well, if you heat the milk first, you need to do that or you will curdle to eggs. > [@Chronos](#): > > I don’t know about a teapot, but if you’re brewing tea in a mug, the thermal mass of the mug is definitely non-negligible: A mug initially at room temperature, full of water initially at boiling, will reach an equilibrium much less than boiling. > > Though that’ll probably take longer than cooling to the air. Pouring in some hot water, sloshing it around, and pouring it out to re-start with more hot water definitely makes a difference. I thought they were talking about just sloshing some hot water around so the mug isn’t unevenly heated. > [@steepone](#): > > I’ve heard the same explanation for the rule about putting the milk in the cup before the tea I do that so the (paper) cup isn’t too hot to hold. 🙂 Also, the coffee stirs the milk into itself. If I add the milk second, it needs to be stirred a bit. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Where are you? > > Plain pork with neither salt nor any other preservatives added to it is very commonly sold in the USA. This. Pork with preservative and salt is called ham, or bacon, or sausage. If someone just says “pork” I expect it to be unadulterated. > [@WildaBeast](#): > > …If my dad wants to go to a specific website he doesn’t already have bookmarked, he doesn’t type the URL in the address bar. He goes to Google, which he has bookmarked, and types say “[www.straightdope.com](http://www.straightdope.com)” in the search box, and then goes to the first search result. I routinely do this. Only I don’t type “www” or “.com”. I just type “straightdope” in the google box, and let it find the site for me. Much easier than typing the whole thing. (Or I use bookmarks. But I pretty much never type in web addresses.) > [@Doug\_K](#): > > I kind of wish that including the “www.” was required IF the site is on a www subdomain. For most of the time I was working at my previous job (a public school district) “[ourdomain.com](http://ourdomain.com)” and “[www.ourdomain.com](http://www.ourdomain.com)” resolved to two different IPs… I have a web page. It’s “[myname.us](http://myname.us)” If you type “[www.myname.us](http://www.myname.us)”, you get a “site not found” error. ---
**Author:** ![WildaBeast](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wildabeast/32/6_2.png) [@WildaBeast](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WildaBeast)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/149 "2020-04-28T18:42:09Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Only I don’t type “www” or “.com”. That’s the unnecessary thing – Dad types the _entire URL_ into Google, including the “www” and “.com” parts, and any slashes other stuff after the domain name. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/150 "2020-04-28T18:43:12Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Bert Nobbins, I notice that you’re British. Americans usually put periods after initials in names and after Mr., Mrs., Ms., and Dr. They also usually put periods in such acronyms as U.S., U.K., and U.S.S.R. Britons usually don’t put periods there… Waste of time. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/151 "2020-04-28T18:44:43Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > … > > This. Pork with preservative and salt is called ham, or bacon, or sausage. If someone just says “pork” I expect it to be unadulterated. > … You can buy salt pork and smoked pork in most grocery stores around here. ---
**Author:** ![LurkerInNJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ed655f/32.png) [@LurkerInNJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkerInNJ)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/152 "2020-04-28T19:42:15Z")
> [@lobotomyboy63](#): > > WRT 2 spaces: [5 Ways Your Resume Makes You Look Old](https://www.businessinsider.com/5-ways-your-resume-makes-you-look-old-2014-10) > > “I am going to go out a limb and declare that putting two spaces after a period is obsolete,” Miller explains. “It is how most of us were taught to type on a typewriter. Therefore, most of us who do this (I have taught myself to stop putting two spaces after a period and it was hard) are over 50 years of age.” > > Miller says he has heard that this has been used as a method of screening out older candidates. 2 spaces are required in my office no matter what your age. I had to adapt to it and I am of the older generation. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Winston\_OBoogie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.winston_oboogie/32/2945_2.png) [@Dr.Winston\_OBoogie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Winston_OBoogie)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/153 "2020-04-28T19:48:40Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > And both usually put an asterisk in I’m. I never put an asterisk in any contraction; I always put an apostrophe in a contraction. Not useless, proper to distinguish “its” from “it’s”. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/154 "2020-04-28T20:06:31Z")
Sorry, that was a stupid mistake on my part. I meant apostrophe. I need to be more careful. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2020, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/155 "2020-04-28T21:56:39Z")
> [@Dr.Winston\_OBoogie](#): > > I never put an asterisk in any contraction; I always put an apostrophe in a contraction. Not useless, proper to distinguish “its” from “it’s”. Yes, that is one of the useful ones, but not _doesnt_ or _couldnt._ In fact adding a apostrophe doesnt shorten them. “cant” is possibly confusing but never in context. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2020, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/156 "2020-04-29T00:22:09Z")
In a world of electronic instrument tuning devices, some musicians still rely on tuning forks. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2020, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/157 "2020-04-29T00:37:29Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > You can buy salt pork and smoked pork in most grocery stores around here. You can buy smoked pork around here, too (and maybe salt pork, though I’m not sure that I’ve noticed it); but it’ll be labeled specifically “smoked pork” (or possibly “ham” or “sausage” or “bacon”.) If the label just says “pork”, it’s plain fresh (or frozen) pork, with nothing added: pork shoulder chops or roast, pork loin roast or chops, or whatever. And any grocery store that’s selling pork at all will have it. ---
**Author:** ![GMANCANADA](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gmancanada/32/2837_2.png) [@GMANCANADA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GMANCANADA)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2020, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/158 "2020-04-29T02:08:10Z")
Another one: **Not using your cell phone while pumping gas.** As far as I know there has never been a single case of an explosion or anything else caused by cell phone use at a pump, but many people still don’t do it. ---
**Author:** ![Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulf_the_Unwashed)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2020, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/159 "2020-04-29T02:54:10Z")
> [@GMANCANADA](#): > > Another one: > > **Not using your cell phone while pumping gas.** > > As far as I know there has never been a single case of an explosion or anything else caused by cell phone use at a pump, but many people still don’t do it. Here’s a case that happened in a town near mine. Big news around here when it happened: [Phone Ignites Gas Station Fire - CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/phone-ignites-gas-station-fire/) Of course, if I have to go back to 2004 to shake loose the only case I’ve ever heard of, it certainly isn;t a daily event… ---
**Author:** ![MDfive21](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ecc23a/32.png) [@MDfive21](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MDfive21)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2020, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/160 "2020-04-29T20:02:13Z")
In casual texting and email I’ve stopped capitalizing anything other than proper nouns. (This is auto-capitalized) Does anyone know the dope on turning off your car while fueling? Seems modern cars should be safe enough to fuel up while running but is there still risk? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2020, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257/161 "2020-04-29T20:06:20Z")
> [@Ulf\_the\_Unwashed](#): > > Here’s a case that happened in a town near mine. Big news around here when it happened: [Phone Ignites Gas Station Fire - CBS News](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/phone-ignites-gas-station-fire/) > > Of course, if I have to go back to 2004 to shake loose the only case I’ve ever heard of, it certainly isn;t a daily event… Didnt Mythbusters cover that also? It was very difficult, iirc. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/behaviours-still-done-though-theyre-no-longer-needed/852257.md?page=9)