My dad says that the Commission on Double Spacing has ruled, in a Teddy Rooseveltesque attempt to simplify our lives, that a double-space is no longer necessary after a period. True?
I just learned about this recently myself. In Apple Works: The Missing Manual, the authors say that “the design of modern computer typefaces eliminates that requirement”.
This page provides a more detailed explanation.
I’m still going to do it anyway. Old habits die hard.
Dropping this rule is yet another sign of the moral decay of our society. Haven’t these people ever seen The List of Adrian Messenger? Would they have wanted Kirk Douglas to go Scott-free?
This is cool:) Now I can honestly say that I do something in the Classical way. It’s also one more thing to use against my kids. “When I was your age, I walked to school on uphill, both ways, in the snow, in July, carrying my sisters on my shoulders AND we used two spaces between our sentences… now eat your beans, there are starving people who’d love them”.
Be careful what you say here or people will laugh at you. 
[eric idle]
Well I used to have to get out of bed at ten o’clock at night, 1/2 an hour before I went to bed. I would work 29 hours a day at the mill, unpaid, only for permission to come back to work, and when we’d get home our mom and our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves singing halleluiah.
You try telling the young people today that, and they won’t believe ya.
[rodney dangerfield]
My wife tells me “eat your food, there are people starving in china!”
So I tell her “have sex with me, there are men who are horny in canada!”
I don’t know bud, I think my college English professors would not look to kindly on only one space after a period. I believe I have lossed points because of this in the past.
You’re sure that’s why you lossed the points, Studoggie?:rolleyes:
I put two spaces after a sentence, even when I know it won’t display (like it won’t here). It’s habit. There was a thread a while back that dealt with this question, among others, and there were interesting points made by people dealing with manuscripts and typesetting.
Whatthehell.Whynotjustgetridofspacingaltogether?Imean,ifwejustusecommasallthetime,orsomeotherformofpunctuation,wereallydon’tneedspacesatall.Don’tyouthink?Icouldlearntolivewithoutthem,justlikedouble-spacesafteraperiod.Sothere.
I am still gonna put 2 spaces after my periods so my papers look longer!
Matt Shepard
Thereappearstobeatleastonespacebetween’Sothere’andtheGrinningSmilie.
What the hell are you talking about?
With typewriters, there was a reason for it. With word processors, there is no reason for it. That is reason enough to change the rule.
Also, I don’t know if it’s true with today’s word processors, but with early word processors, a double space after a period could cause a bad line wrap in the hard copy when a sentence ended at the end of a line.