Typing was a mandatory course at my school, and in the 1960s that meant learning on a typewriter with green caps on the keys. We were taught to put two spaces after a period. In this computer era that habit is outmoded, as explained by
Grammar Girl:
Most typewriter fonts are what are called monospaced fonts. That means every character takes up the same amount of space. An "i" takes up as much space as an "m," for example. When using a monospaced font, where everything is the same width, it makes sense to type two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence to create a visual break. For that reason, people who learned to type on a typewriter were taught to put two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence.
But when you're typing on a computer, most fonts are proportional fonts, which means that characters are different widths. An "i" is more narrow than an "m," for example, and putting extra space between sentences doesn't do anything to improve readability.
There is a
discussion thread on this subject at Reddit.
Like I a lot of people in their late 20s, I get the feeling I was one of the last to do a lot of things that people only a few years younger associate with a more distant past. I had duck and cover drills a couple of times in my very eary school days. I remember the USSR on maps. I used a typewriter. I had to take keyboarding. I double-space between sentences too. It was pretty strictly enforced for any typed papers when I was in grade school. It was hammered into me that single=spacing was sloppy.
ReplyDeleteThe nutty part? I double-space in texts sometimes. The habit is that embeded.
Fuzzbutt, you just described my childhood to a tee, my texting habits as well.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you noticed Stan but Blogger automatically removes the second space after the period when you post. Having learned to type as you learned to I just assumed that it was a programming glitch but I guess I was wrong, and old.
JBW, it's becauseof how html is processed. From the Reddit thread: "Any amount of spaces in a row = 1 space. This is so someone can indent their html, without random spaces showing up everywhere."
ReplyDeleteI ignore this rule all the time. Rebel that I am. I have to admit that I'm puzzled as to why "Grammar Girl" (who I really like) uses the phrase "more narrow." Unless I was taught incorrectly, it is grammatically improper to use "more" before a word that has an "er" form such as "narrower."
ReplyDeleteI'm narly 40, but I avoided typing class, so I never got into the double space habit. I'm often given Word documents to recreate in HTML. My OCD forces me to remove the double space in the coding, even if it doesn't matter in the final product.
ReplyDeleteI'm in my 30s and "in between" the X gen and Y gen. Sometimes I double space after a sentence (for academic papers), but mostly single space (for every day purpose). It all depends.
ReplyDeleteIt was after all punctuation that ended a sentence (including ? and !). I still find myself unable to break this habit.
ReplyDeleteWell, hell, that must mean I’m old too. I learned on a typewriter, got the same rule knocked into my head, and a decade later I sat down in front of my very first Windows machine (with a mouse! What a strange thing that was -- took weeks to get used to it) at a new job and was handed a company stylebook. First rule: single spacing after periods AND colons.
ReplyDeleteYes, it was a hard habit to break. But now I'm oversensitized in the opposite direction, and double spaces after periods and colons make me cringe.
I'm 29, and also learned to type on a typewriter, and I still usually put two spaces. As a programmer, I often use mono fonts, where two clearly looks better. It's nice that modern cellphones translate "space space" to "period space".
ReplyDeleteI'm a proofreader who just spent an extra half hour taking spaces out of a client's document (and gritting my teeth, as I get paid by the page, not the hour). The real problem for me is that people tend to be inconsistent and will use one, two, or three spaces between sentences in the same document. If they're consistent, I can let it go, but if they mix and don't match ... grrrrr.
ReplyDeleteGeorgette, if it's a Word document, you should be able to do all the replacements in a couple minutes by using the Replace feature. Ask it to replace (period)(space)(space)(space) with (period)(space)(space),and then replace the double-spaces with single spaces. You should be able to Replace All unless there are periods in tables etc.
ReplyDeleteAfraid I also still double-space. Thank you for advice on how to "replace" spaces in Word. I didn't think a "space" could take a place in the replacement box. However, Wiki articles drive me nuts with their hard-to-read single-space policy. Now, how to enter a (period)(space) with (period)(space)(space) would be really useful.
ReplyDelete