Putting only one space after a period: How should offenders be punished?

[LynneSin]

Seriously, the proper way for a period is to have TWO SPACES afterwards. This is how we are taught in typing class and honestly I think it gives a nice flow to what you are reading. I know when I get to that period I have a slight tiny breather and I can move on to the next sentence. So all you lazy ass typers out there get with the program and put that extra space in there!!! Thank you!

[ret5hd]

1. doesn't work with html: 10 spaces here-> <-

[tk2kewl]

2. COLLAPSE ALL THE WHITE SPACES!

[LynneSin]

11. I have a 1000 word rant about that!!!!

(that's my 1000 word rant with all the white spaces removed)

[RadiationTherapy]

3. No, the old 2 space visual is distracting in digital.

It looks weird. It looks extraneous. And, I think, actually makes legibility more difficult. End double spacing now! It looks weird. It looks extraneous. And, I think, actually makes legibility more difficult. End double spacing now! It looks weird. It looks extraneous. And, I think, actually makes legibility more difficult. End double spacing now! It looks weird. It looks extraneous. And, I think, actually makes legibility more difficult. End double spacing now!

It looks weird. It looks extraneous. And, I think, actually makes legibility more difficult. End double spacing now! It looks weird. It looks extraneous. And, I think, actually makes legibility more difficult. End double spacing now! It looks weird. It looks extraneous. And, I think, actually makes legibility more difficult. End double spacing now! It looks weird. It looks extraneous. And, I think, actually makes legibility more difficult. End double spacing now!

Oh, and it doesn't matter in HTML, so my point has been mooted. hahaha

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. I used to do that, and then all my translation clients said not to.

[yellowcanine]

5. I have trouble working up any genuine umbrage over this issue.

Actually I just responded in order to use the word "umbrage." I love that word.

[OriginalGeek]

22. Burnt Umbrage was my favorite color

in the crayon box.

[dimbear]

32. Sometimes you almost get all snitty but not quite. It's called taking penumbrage. n/t

[OriginalGeek]

44. At first I thought you were wrong

but after careful consideration I have occluded you are correct.

[dimbear]

45. Love it. !!! n/t

[Scout]

6. sorry, doing book typesetting/composition we were taught only 1 space. n/t

[RebelOne]

13. Yep. I did typesetting/composition for many magazines

and only one space is used. Have you ever seen a book or magazine with 2 spaces after a period? I think not.

[Auggie]

27. Ad guy here: one space

[YellowRubberDuckie]

48. Yep.

My grammar, spelling and punctuation comes from the news room. One space and no comma before the "and" before the end of a list.

[bluesbassman]

7. You're not the boss of me.

[Turbineguy]

8. They should be made to choose:

Choice 1: We shove a living snake up your ass.

Choice 2: You have to listen to Ted Nugent for 3 hours.

[RedCloud]

9. A dragon shall decide

Currently, the Dragon is helping me. Now let's see how much space was left in between sentences and the first one. It's a good girl or boy Dragon. It's time to feed you some more charcoal. Clearly two spaces is the way to go. It's Dragon tested Dragon approved.

[fizzgig]

10. i'm a recovering print reporter

i haven't double spaced after a period since my freshman year of college.

[bluedigger]

12. Serial sentencers are a pox on creativity.

I mean, seriously, if you can't make a complete and purposeful thought in one sentence then you probably have no business sharing your muddled thoughts in the first place, as they are way too complex for the average reader to process for meaningful content.

[cliffordu]

51. Easy for you to say.

[MineralMan]

14. That's not the case any longer.

Nobody expects two spaces after periods any more. In fact Microsoft Word will pretty much automatically remove them for you, and they won't ever appear in anything using HTML. That only applied to fixed spacing typewriter fonts. Today, everything is proportional, unless you specifically select a fixed width font. When you type today on a computer, you're actually setting type. Typesetters don't use two spaces after a period.

[LynneSin]

15. You can pry my second space after the period from my cold dead hands! That's how I feel.

So there! Deal with it! Are you annoyed yet? I do two spaces after '!' and '?' too! Woohoo! I love typing!! I love double spaces after periods too! I'm a crazy girl aren't I? Well time to go so don't be sad. Really stop crying!

[MineralMan]

16. Ha! HTML wiped out all your double spaces.

So there!

[A Simple Game]

28. I expect two spaces! That is how I was taught. It also

makes reading paragraphs easier. Periods with some fonts are hard to see.

I don't have Microsoft word anymore, but I know the older versions left the double spaces, in fact the older versions wouldn't automatically capitalize the first word if you didn't use two spaces.

I just tried Open Office and Microsoft Works, both leave the double space, but they also automatically capitalize after one or two spaces.

I was taught on Word Perfect in collage (2002) and we used double spaces with that program too. This was mostly for business typing.

I know the subject came up and if I recall correctly the teacher said single spaces were used in publishing to save paper and on computers to save memory as a space is considered a character.

[fishwax]

17. their rejection of obsolete formatting and standards should be punishment enough

My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!

[Denninmi]

18. Single space. Double space. Why would anyone use single?

I agree, I was taught it was double space after a period, question mark, or exclamation point!

[Denninmi]

19. I see - it's not us. It's the damned computers.

They do as they please -- the computer adjusted my spacing. That stinks.

Soon, they will overthrow the pathetic humans.

[Kali]

20. I'm with you.

I was trained to put 2 spaces and when I am typing, I always do it. Fortunately, since the current fashion is to use only one space most programs remove the extra one automatically. However when I try to do it while texting on my phone, it makes the auto-capitalizing feature stop. So if I double space, I have to reset the first letter of the next sentence as a capital. I do NOT use text language like "U R 2 dumb to spell out a word." I tend to use full sentences and punctuation.

[CottonBear]

35. And I thought I was the only person who uses 2 spaces and full sentences while texting!

I just can't bring myself to use text language shortcuts/abbreviations. I did not know, however, that digital typesetting is proportional. You learn something new everyday. I grew up in the 1960s and 1970s. I learned to type on a typewriter. I had to produce term papers and reports on my trusty Smith-Corona typewriter. I always put two spaces between sentences. It's a habit I cannot break.

[Kali]

38. If I abbreviate while texting it usually involves a period.

for example: My Drs. appt. is at 4. (apostrophe is too hard to find so that is one I leave off)

[CottonBear]

39. I finally have learned where the apostrophe and the comma are on my cell phone.

I tend to text very short, concise AND grammatically correct sentences.

[kentauros]

42. If I was taught two-spaces in that old typing class in eighth grade

(on the typwriters from the 1920s because the school district was too cheap to get anything "modern" in 1975) then I promptly forgot it after I was done with it. I was not very good at typing then, very slow and never learned how to touch-type. Only after decades of typing on computers did I finally get the nerve to look away from the keyboard, though I still do sometimes. Of course, I must look at the tiny keypad on my crackberry-lite when txting, and yes, I do shorten things a bit while still typing out full sentences. 144 characters is not enough!

But, adding that extra space never was intuitive in my subsequent years of writing on a computer (hand-writing took too long, and cramped the hell out of my hands faster than typing could!) According to Scout above, it seems my intuition was correct

[MadrasT]

21. I have the same pet peeve but I mostly go the opposite way on this.

It's only correct if you are using a typewriter with fixed character width.

Typewriters do not have any way to adjust spacing.

For electronic typesetting with proportional fonts, only one space is needed from a typographical perspective. In proportional fonts, the single space after the period is automatically the right amount of white space without a second space.

I do a lot of electronic typesetting and desktop publishing and always have to go through and strip out all the extra spaces that people put in after their periods and other end of sentence punctuation, or the spacing in the finished product is a mess. (Fortunately you can actually use global search-and-replace in programs like MS Word to automate this tedium.)

Two spaces is correct for typing with a fixed font width.

Two spaces is usually typographically incorrect for electronic typesetting with proportional fonts. It creates unnecessary distracting white space.

[nolabear]

23. One space is the new two spaces. Editors want ms with only one.

And editors who'll even CONSIDER a ms rule. LOL!

[grasswire]

24. what we were taught in typing class has no bearing on publishing style rules

The double space after periods was drummed out of me decades ago.

Question: do you hit "enter" at the end of each line of characters?

The double space is sort of like that.

Obsolete.

[csziggy]

41. It took me six months to learn NOT to reach for the return lever for each line

After I got my first computer! And I had a very bad habit of hitting "return" twice at the end of each paragraph for the longest time.

I didn't stop using two spaces after a period until some significant time after that. Now that I have been using computers for longer than I used manual typewriters, I've gotten away from those bad habits. (Got my first computer in 1982, so this year is my 30th computer anniversary!)

[MiddleFingerMom]

25. Quite often, the EXTREME importance of space can NOT be underestimated...

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... just pre-period.
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Along with an abundance of, "Yes, Dear's".
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LOTS of space.
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[Iris]

26. Don't most word processing programs auto-correct to 1 space now?

[taterguy]

29. They should be locked in a room with a smelly cat.

[zanana1]

36. Or a gaseous dog. nt

[jmowreader]

30. They should be given a glass of milk and a cookie...

and congratulated for maturing beyond the era of typewriting.

[Bolo Boffin]

31. Um...

Seriously, the proper way for a period is to have TWO SPACES afterwards. This is how we are taught in typing class and honestly I think it gives a nice flow to what you are reading. I know when I get to that period I have a slight tiny breather and I can move on to the next sentence. So all you lazy ass typers out there get with the program and put that extra space in there!!! Thank you!

SINNER!

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

33. Thank you for this, Lynne Sin. nt.

[baldguy]

34. Said the memo from the Redundant Department of Redundancies Department.

And I note that you have only one space between each of your sentences in the OP.

[backscatter712]

37. Two spaces is obsolete.

That convention was used back when we were using typewriters and fixed-space fonts. On modern systems with proportional fonts and actual kerning, you only use one space. The computer is smart enough to know that when you have a period, followed by a space and a capital letter, that it should put in enough space to indicate the end of one sentence and the start of another. Two spaces is now redundant.

[kentauros]

40. They should be "punished" with getting published!

While the "double-spacers" get nada

[mzteris]

43. I'm sorry, with the advent of computers,

and proportional fonts the "two space rule" went out the window. The two space rule was initially used due to monotype size such as we old-fogies learned to type on. Not many people use them anymore.

I had to completely relearn how to type. Back when I was job-hunting and they had those computerized typing tests, I'd have to ask, is this a "two-space" (old program) or "one-space" (new program) after-the-period program, because if you did one and the program was the other, it would count as an ERROR! (Horrors!)

[Throd]

46. Their punishment is the pitiful and pointless lives they must endure. More like apes than humans.

I use three spaces to really hammer it home.

[ProudProgressiveNow]

47. I agree, with one exception....

Before I retired, I used to write proposals for contracts. Using one space after a period, along with tweaking line spacing and kerning was a way to stay under page limitations in many of our responses.

[Make7]

49. I think this is what you meant:

[br /][div class="excerpt" style="padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 6px; border: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius: 0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #999999;"]LynneSin[div style="float:right; font-size: 0.85em;"]Thu Apr 19, 2012, 12:56 PM[div class="excerpt" style="padding-top: 10px; border: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; background-color: #ffffff; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #999999;"][div style="float:left;"][div style="margin-left: 58px;"][div style="font-size: 1.4615em; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold; padding-top: 12px; padding-bottom: 6px; border-bottom: dotted 1px #999999;"]Putting only one space after a period: How should offenders be punished?[br /]Seriously, the proper way for a period is to have TWO SPACES afterwards.  This is how we are taught in typing class and honestly I think it gives a nice flow to what you are reading.  I know when I get to that period I have a slight tiny breather and I can move on to the next sentence.  So all you lazy ass typers out there get with the program and put that extra space in there!!!  Thank you![br /] [br /]
What ever are we going to do with you?
 

[krispos42]

50. Will Farrell uses their skulls for a cowbell.

Yeah!!!






Double-space it!

[OxQQme]

52. When the ex-wife

was in her period, I left LOTS of space.
After her period,we got closer.

[a2liberal]

53. They should be sat down and forced

to read their own silly screeds about how one space is the "correct" typographical way, reformatted with two spaces the way it should be. Then make them admit how much nicer it looks and how much easier to read it is. If they refuse, send them to a forced re-education camp. :-D