Need an argument settled: How many spaces after periods in documents?

[luvsJack]

If you are a student, however your teacher wants it; if you are an employee, however your boss prefers it.

According to the textbooks (brand new editions) used in the keyboarding and word processing classes at the college I work for, 2 spaces is proper.

 

[jbcheerchick93]

I'm 17 and I was taught two spaces after every sentence, no matter what punctuation you ended it with. Online I only use one but whenever I write a paper I still use two. It's never been a problem for me and I have to write according to MLA format.

 

[Tinker'n'Fun]

I'm 17 and I was taught two spaces after every sentence, no matter what punctuation you ended it with. Online I only use one but whenever I write a paper I still use two. It's never been a problem for me and I have to write according to MLA format.

My children are 18 and 15. Both were taught one space, no matter what. I think the problem is that the rules are not defined at all. If they wanted to change it to one, it should have been changed everywhere. It is just too confusing for everyone to try and figure out what is right, what it wrong. I agree with the above poster, do what your teacher/school and or boss ask of you and you will be fine. The problem is getting your brain to change from one place to the other!

 

[bicker]

Digging back a few decades, back to my years in typography, I don't think this issue is really "old school" versus "new school". Rather, I believe it is a matter of whether the text is typeset or simply typed.

With typeset text, spacing between characters varies based on the characters, based on an understanding of what makes text optimally readable. That's why we get ligatures (special presentations of two characters, such as 'f' and 'i', that combine the two into a special character, so that the top of the 'f' doesn't look strange right next to the dot of the 'i'.) I believe something similar applies with spacing (with, if my memory serves me, the typical spacing between a period and the beginning of the next sentence something more than one space but less than two spaces).

A typewriter, of course, didn't have any means of varying spacing between characters. All it can do is put in one space or two, so since one space is "too close together" for optimal readability, the standard became to put two spaces in.

Note that with HTML it doesn't matter. HTML knows that people are inconsistent in this regard, and so it ignores all instances of multiple spaces. This is "end. Begin" with one space:
"end. Begin"
... and this has ten spaces after the period:
"end. Begin"
No difference. Browsers do the typesetting for you, overcoming the variance between typists.

 

[bonoriffic]

Just open any major publication, it will be 1 space. NY Times, Wall Street Journal, or any recent book. 1 space. 5 spaces to begin a paragraph is also no longer correct.

Things change. I was taught there were 9 planets in our solar system. If the number of planets can be reduced by 1, surely losing 1 space shouldn't be too tough to handle.

 

[Geoff_M]

Note that with HTML it doesn't matter. HTML knows that people are inconsistent in this regard, and so it ignores all instances of multiple spaces. This is "end. Begin" with one space:
"end. Begin"
... and this has ten spaces after the period:
"end. Begin"
No difference. Browsers do the typesetting for you, overcoming the variance between typists.

It's a little more complicated than that. In interpreting HTML, browsers do indeed ignore anything after the first space, but that's also true of carriage returns which are ignored entirely by browsers. The only way your carriage returns are displayed correctly is that the UBB software used by the DIS inserts a line break <br> tag in place of each CR. Basically, absent any formatting tags, browsers treat all text as a compressed text stream. In the case of sentence spacing it may help, but the web isn't built around English grammatical standards. HTML also offers the non-blank space (&nbsp) command to add extra spacing back in, and the UBB software could also add those like the <br> tags if its author desired.

 

[MushyMushy]

I was taught 2, but I know that 1 is the norm now. I still do 2 spaces, and have never been in a situation where I've been told it was "wrong," even in writing classes.

 

[ORMom2Four]

I was taught two spaces on a typewriter in 1987.

My older kids (who are almost 19 and 16) were taught one space using a computer.

I still use two spaces out of habit

 

[Carly_Roach]

I understand that. I'm in the middle of reading Bill Bryson's The Mother Tongue, English and How It Got That Way, about the evolution of our language. Not to start a side debate, but I don't think that the popularization of text-speak represents an advancement of our communications skills in general. The problem is that its use has not limited itself to the mediums that require the brevity. I think the "twitter-ization" of the upcoming generation's writing skills make the expression and comprehension of complex thoughts and ideas more of a challenge. My Mom is a university instructor and she's noticed this trend in her student's written work. My wife, who's a middle school teacher, sees "text-speak" all the time in class work... and she teaches math.

That, my friend, would be an interesting conversation.

I can easily see the generation gap between us 40-somethings and the 20-somethings I see texting today. Not long ago I had to parse out a Federal regulation that was one sentence long but that sentence took up an entire paragraph. The 30-somethings kind of understood the regulation and the 40-, 50-somethings had to parse but understood it after parsing. The 60-somethings understood it perfectly in the first reading without parsing.

However, the 20-somethings in my office (who both have college degrees BTW) gave up immediately because, and I quote:

"It's too long and doesn't make sense. Who can keep all the things they said in first part in their head long enough to apply to the second part? They should write it better. Who writes it that way? This is stupid! I'm not doing this."

To which I had to agree with them: they're not doing this.

 

[beaucoup]

2 spaces.
Even iPhones & iPod Touches know that if you hit space twice, it knows to type a period for you as you are indicating the end of a sentence.

 

[Disnydad]

My new Droid automatically insterts a period if you space twice. I was taught to space twice after a period in high school typing and college writing classes.

 

[PrincessKsMom]

Old school -- 2 spaces. I've been a legal secretary for 26 years and they still expect 2 spaces. And since I've been typing for 30 years, it will always be 2 spaces. Ain't teaching this old dog a new trick.

 

[kaytieeldr]

One (by the way, since we're discussing what's proper, the numbers zero through ten should be spelled out; only once we get to 11 should the digits be used ) space IS tough to handle as one ages; frequently I can't tell if the punctuation is a period or a comma - especially when, as someone indicated earlier, it's followed by a proper noun. Two spaces is a visual indication to me that a new sentence begins.

Not sure why it's being referred to as 'old-school'. It's a standard rule of grammar and writing.

 

[KristaTX]

How have I never heard of this change? Wow. Maybe because I don't have kids? I guess it doesn't matter, but I'll be typing 2 spaces for the rest of my life. It's automatic for me, and I'm not going to teach myself to retype. It really doesn't matter to me as long as I'm not punished for it .

It's unlike that other annoying typing change involving the serial comma. THAT is another whole story altogether. I will never get used to reading sentences that leave out the last comma in a series . That is completely annoying and was a ridiculous change that someone came up with. I can only guess to save ink . That omission so easily and so often changes how one reads the entire sentence. It makes things sound ridiculous.

 

[lyncecelia]

No, not really Still being told I'm too old school...and I'm only 32!

I'm 22 and I was taught to use two spaces. I was told it was "wrong" but it's natural to me, and it also looks better! What's the difference? It's a space, it doesn't change the contents of the information like a misplaced comma or period would.

 

[PollyannaMom]

I was taught to use two spaces, and I still type that way. (In fact, my typing here on the DIS looked weird to me until I realized HTML was deleting some of my spaces.)