I was taught all the way through law school to use two periods. If my paralegals give me anything with one space, I write across the first page: “TWO (2) SPACES BETWEEN PARAGRAPHS!1!” Then, I send a company wide e-mail showing the example, and I make sure to make note of it on his performance review.
You sound like a really great guy to work for.
:rolleyes:
Wait…two periods? Two spaces between paragraphs? What are you talking about? Is this a serious post?
Yeah!
Frankly, I’m not sure I could re-train myself to put one space after a period. I have been typing so long, and typed so many hundreds of thousands of words, that my thumb goes ‘tap tap’ on the space bar after a period of its own volition.
Wait, so do word processing programs do the work for me, so I don’t have to worry if I do still use two spaces? I had a high school typing class where we did use computers, and even there I was taught then to use two spaces… the thing is, I don’t give a crap which I’m supposed to use, I’m just pretty sure I can’t retrain myself after all these years. So will Microsoft Word take care of the situation for me, or do I have to change an option somewhere?
On preview, I’m glad I’m not the only one worried about being able to retrain myself.
Me, too. I learned to type on a manual typewriter, and had two spaces hammered into my brain, along with plenty of other stylistic dinosaurs.
I learned in high school and throughout college to use two spaces. When I started working as a typesetter (pre-desktop publishing), I used an electronic typesetting system that wouldn’t allow you to type two spaces in a row. In fact, it would beep at you when you did. That cured me of the habit in no time.
I learned to type on a computer, and although I don’t remember who taught me, I also learned to put 2 spaces between sentences. I’m pretty sure that I can’t retrain myself at this point.
I’m pretty sure that if my computer beeped at me every time I typed two spaces, the first casualty would be my computer, not my two-space habit.
Actually, it has nothing to do with this message board particularly. It’s part of how HTML is formatted by your browser. By definition, anything more than a single space is condensed downed into one (unless explicitly forced using the blank space entity).
Essentially, the entire web is doing single space after a period by default.
My first typewriter, back in 1976, was a big sturdy Royal, on which I always put two spaces after a period. I doubt if I could change from two spaces to one even if I wanted to; even though I’ve embraced the various neat things one can do with word processing, my basic typing habits are still there. (Though when I started using computers in the '80s, it took a while to stop listening for that ding!. I kind of miss sliding the carriage back with my left hand. Always felt like I’d accomplished something.)
If an editor specifically requested only one space after periods, it would be easier for me to type it normally and then do a global replace of “period space space” with “period space”.
Do those of you who think adaptation is impossible for you still hit ‘enter’ (‘return’ on an electric typewriter) at the end of each line? Do you still use a tab to begin indented paragraphs? Do you center text by tabbing to the center, backspacing once for every pair of characters in the line, then typing it in? Do you do everything in 10 point (elite) or 12 point (pica) size?
If not, why do you think you’re incapable of changing your typing habits?
I’m a typographer, and I hate double spaces. The first thing I do when receiving any text from anyone is use a find/replace to get rid of them. Then I do the double returns, the spaces at the end of paragraphs (after the period), spaces or tabs at the beginning of paragraphs, and a lot of other bad-typing artifacts.
By the way, I learned to type on a manual typewriter as well, and was taught double-spacing after periods. But I stopped doing that immediately when I got on a computer.
Is it just me, or does anyone else find all the introductory material in that article (preceding the table of contents) to be entirely opaque?
Amen. I don’t get it either. As I said above I spent more than 20 years on typewriters and even took a typing course to help my speed. I’m as old school as they get.
And as soon as I got a computer (which was before Captain Carrot was born :smack: ) I learned to put in one space. It wasn’t even hard.
Amen. I have a Word macro set up to strip all that from the documents that come in. Two spaces just make me roll my eyes.
What boggles me is some of our clients demand two spaces. They’re not even using monospace font; it’s just The Way It’s Done.
I’m a writer who recently purchased a newspaper. I can often tell the ages of writers by the formatting of the articles and letters they submit.
Back in the dark ages (I took typing in high school in 1974), we were taught to use two spaces. As soon as I got involved in publishing in the 80’s, it was explained in no uncertain terms that two spaces are for office letters, not for typeset documents. Two spaces after a period are never used in books, magazines, or newspapers, and I believe every single style guide out there will agree on the subject. Certainly all of mine do.
It’s a pretty quick macro I run on submissions: change (space+space) to (space), then change (paragraph+white space) to (paragraph), then change (paragraph+paragraph) to (paragraph), then change straight quotes to typesetter’s quotes (both single ’ and double “). Then I manually check to make sure there were no feet/inch references (you don’t use curly quotes in 6’4”).
Then, and only then, do I start editing.
What, what? How else . . . 
You use the paragraph formatting panel.
What if you changed your mind about how you wanted paragraphs formatted? You going to go through and change all the tab marks? Or what if you need tabs for … tabulation? Why have that pointless paragraph tab complicating things?
On legal documents some bits are supposed to be indented and some aren’t. I hate the auto-first-line-indent thingy.
To answer the OP, I was taught on a computer (an Archimedes with a WYSIWIG word-processing program, incidentally) to use two spaces.
Doesn’t everyone full justify these days? It hardly matters.
Unless I’m missing something, generally the only places in a legal document that would have this characteristic are the small parts at the beginning and the end of the document.
With indented paragraphs, you have to format them separately anyway.
That’s a reason to leave out the double spacing. In some justifications styles, putting in an extra hard space can mess up the typesetting and you get “rivers” and other bad typographical artifacts.