It's best practice to do this to avoid any issues should some other library or JS file change the value of `$` to something other than `jQuery`. Within the context of this function `$` will always be `jQuery`. Which in this case may not mean much since `$` is only used once and could possibly have just been replaced with `jQuery` however it just means if this file should grow in the future it's already ready for that.

Maybe I missed when we decided to switch to 2 space indent or I just blanked it out. I didn't know we were doing that, but I'm happy to switch. I prefer 2 space indent.