Slate article on 2 spaces after sentences...

[frenchy]

Originally Posted by RSS

Sixty-something.

its funny u changed this from "60 plus" to "sixty something",reminds me of my aunt who always says shes 50 plus..yeah 50 plus 16.

 

[pebblegrain]

and do you indent your paragraphs?

 

[tagutcow]

Originally Posted by Stazy

You know a lot about random things. I like it.

It is only because, as a child, I read the classics:

There are many subjects about which I know next to nothing at all. Like, say, pleasuring a woman.

Originally Posted by pebblegrain

and do you indent your paragraphs?

In fact, my first few months here, I did:

example: http://www.styleforum.net/showpost.p...0&postcount=35

I stopped when I realized most people here have a half-assed approach to formatting their posts. Peer pressure, I suppose.

 

[Gibonius]

I'm under 30 and use two spaces, simply because I took a typing class from someone who must have been from the typewriter generation and insisted we all use two spaces. It just stuck, you don't even notice it after awhile. Hitting the spacebar twice instead of once really doesn't slow you down at all and a single space looks odd to me now, after years of doing it with two spaces. Doesn't hurt anything, and only typographic nerds are going to get upset, and really who cares about that?

 

[Kent Wang]

Originally Posted by Cool The Kid

*EDIT* Even VBB agrees w/one space.
Just to expand on this, in case not everyone is aware, this forum and probably almost all web sites are going to ignore your double space and treat is as a single. This is because HTML ignores all whitespace beyond a single one. Most software will replace linebreaks with <br />, which allows you to have multiple of, but they don't bother to do this to preserve double spaces (or more). I believe Word also corrects double spaces, so all you double spacers, where are you typing them so people will see? I can only imagine just a few email programs that don't fix them.

 

[Rambo]

I'm not old and was taught 2 spaces after a period and 1 space after a comma.

 

[tagutcow]

Originally Posted by Gibonius

Doesn't hurt anything, and only typographic nerds are going to get upset, and really who cares about that?

Whoah. I don't think you understand what you're getting into here.

I mean, do you really want to piss off a typographic nerd?

Do you understand what dire consequences await you? Huh?

Okay, not much will happen, besides us shoving our hands in our pockets and skulking off, grumbling something under our breath about how schoolchildren are taught to print with the Futura 'a' allograph despite the fact that almost no typefaces use it.

 

[Coburn]

Taught to use two spaces. But, I'm baby boomer gen.

 

[warmpi]

My keyboarding instructor taught that both two spaces and one space are correct. However, being born in the computer generation, two spaces was never really even a consideration.

The exception was when papers when assigned and page minimums were enforced. Two-spacing sentences was one of my first moves to squeeze out a few extra lines. It was a win-win situation: I didn't have to write any more, and teacher had less crap to read.

Originally Posted by tagutcow

Actually, one thing I often do that would make most typographers look askance is use a double-minus sign to set off a parenthetical comment at the end of a sentences-- the kind of punctuation I use in this sentence, for instance. Technically one should use an em dash character, but the em dashes in the fonts used by web forums are usually too short to be distingishable from en dashes or minus signs.

Yeah, I do that a lot too. I find usage of parentheses in sentences to be distasteful -- it looks out of place and just kills the flow.

 

[IUtoSLU]

I was taught 2 spaces. Whenever I see a single space, I have chalked it up to bad teaching. I never knew a whole world of single-spacing typograchic adherents existed.

 

[rjakapeanut]

I've never used double spaces. That seems really weird. I'm trying it out right now and I think it looks ridiculous. It's probably a generational thing.

 

[HEWSINATOR]

I never used 2 spaces until I started work with a highly customized Word suite with strict fomratting and &quot;styles&quot; guidelines.

I suppose most places in the same line of work have this too. Our IT trainer noticed I did not use 2 spaces, I debated the point with her that it is no longer necessary, let alone wrong, and in the end just went with it, adding the double space. I thought I would take me way longer than it did to change the habit, but I imagine this post is typed with two spaces at the end of each sentence, I just do not even notice it any more.

The other debate I had is the use of the serial comma. I use it, always have, and think it is safest to use it. However, that is a debate in the office too.

 

[boogaboogabooga]

The fact that people are using aesthetics to validate or negate either the 1 or 2 spacing post-sentence is irrelevant. I've been taught to do the 2 space thing. I never really put thought into it, but mechanically when you think about it the period, exclamation point, or question mark signify the end of the sentence as the capitalized letter beginning of the next sentence marks, to the point of being redundant, the beginning of a new sentence. The additional space is totally unnecessary and though marginal, is an unneeded amount of additional work. I'm one spacing the **** out of everything, starting with this post. In fact, I'm not even indenting anymore. The space between paragraphs defines them as separate sections of text. Plus, the more I can tell people I write sort of like Cormac McCarthy the better.

 

[CTstudent]

I use 2 spaces, since thats what I was taught to do. I'm not sure if it's such a generational thing, though, considering I'm only 18.

 

[pebblegrain]

I have to say, I am leaning towards trying my hand at one space. I have perhaps been wrong all these years and I went to college in an era with internet. Then again, I exclusively used Courier font in college...

The majority of the arguments seem to be "2 spaces is NOT wrong"
But, does anyone believe "1 space is definitely wrong"?