One space or two?

Factual Questions
41

Personally, I always use paragraph styles, and many documents will have one style that’s indented and another that isn’t. It makes it so very easy to make changes later.

I will say that those that tab to indent are a thousand times less irritating that those that actually use 5 spaces. Gah.

Then again, I’m better at word processing in InDesign than I am in Word, so I’m a confirmed weirdo. But I still can’t see why folks feel they are incapable of learning how to type differently. Anyone who learned to type once has shown the ability to learn such things, and they shouldn’t have all that much trouble learning something new. Humans are reprogrammable, with a bit of effort.

42

[QUOTE=acsenray]
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.

[/QUOTE]

Depends on the document. Requests for production and suchlike tend to be largle blocks of text followed by line-by-line lists followed by more blocks of text followed by another list followed by a certificate of service.

Much, much easier just to tab when you need one. It’s one extra keystroke per line or paragraph as opposed to a minute and a half of highlight > move indent marker, highlight > move indent marker, etc.

43

I’ve been typing since I took a typing class in the 10th grade, so that’s coming up on 25 years ago – we learned on these big ol’ IBM electric typewriters that could type in two (!) differnt fonts (if you changed the typeface ball-thingy). There were probably other fonts available but we only had two.

Anyway, there is no way I could re-train myself to use one space after a period. It’s an involuntary muscle response now to type <period><space><space>.

Just another sign that I am getting old and out of touch.

Do they still put two spaces between the state abbreviation and ZIP code on a mailing address?*

*you see, before email, there was this thing called “mail” where you had to write or print your message out onto paper, which you then folded into an envelope and affixed a stamp to. A federal employee would then come to your house, pick up the envelope, and deliver it to the recipient – anywhere in the country! And it usually took less than a week!

44

This is the first I’ve heard of this debate. I’ve always used double spaces after a sentence, and it strikes me as odd that anyone would do it differently. It just seems wrong to me. I guess I don’t really notice it on here, but in a program like Microsoft word or on a hard copy paper, the sentences would run together too much I think.

45

[QUOTE=Justin Credible]
I guess I don’t really notice it on here, but in a program like Microsoft word or on a hard copy paper, the sentences would run together too much I think.
[/QUOTE]

Look at any professionally typeset publication (meaning, pretty much anything in your library, any magazine, any newspaper). They are not double spaced after the period.

Style guides that advocate the single space after a period, colon, question mark, exclamation point: APA, Chicago Manual of Style, Turabian Style, MLA, AP.

Style guides that advocate a double space after those punctuation marks: Can’t find one.

46

[QUOTE=pulykamell]
Look at any professionally typeset publication (meaning, pretty much anything in your library, any magazine, any newspaper). They are not double spaced after the period.

Style guides that advocate the single space after a period, colon, question mark, exclamation point: APA, Chicago Manual of Style, Turabian Style, MLA, AP.

Style guides that advocate a double space after those punctuation marks: Can’t find one.
[/QUOTE]

Weird. As recently as the late 90’s, I was still being taught to double space at the end of a sentence. I guess it never came up in college, even thought I have used both APA and MLA and of course I always double spaced then as well.

Well, I don’t care. I’m not going to change it now. It’s others who are wrong.

47

[QUOTE=Justin Credible]
I guess I don’t really notice it on here, but in a program like Microsoft word or on a hard copy paper, the sentences would run together too much I think.
[/QUOTE]
It’s very difficult to find anything professionally-prepared that has two spaces after periods. Every brochure, catalog, newspaper, flyer, poster, book, magazine, newsletter, and Web site uses only one space.

You may think you’re seeing two spaces, but you aren’t.

48

I am an old fogey. I went to high school in the 40’s and my typing teacher told us to put 1 or 2 spaces after each sentence. She said it didn’t really matter which we used since there were no rules for that. So, I have always used just 1 space. :slight_smile:

49

High school typing, 1986. Very specifically, one space after a comma, two after a period. Anything else was marked wrong.

50

When I was in highschool I was taught 2 spaces. I graduated in 79.

51

In my experience as a lawyer, two spaces is considerably more common in word-processed documents (letters, pleadings), while stuff that is actually published (casebooks) uses one space. Hence, whenever I’m writing something, I put two spaces.

52

Again, just to emphasize, the two spaces rule was instituted in order to help typesetters who were going to use the typewritten document to redo the whole thing (without double spacing). Now that we do the typesetting ourselves, this guideline is no longer applicable.

53

When I learned to type in high school (both on an electric typewriter and a computer) it was with two spaces. I used two spaces all through college and grad school. In my current job, we follow APA style and it took me about a week to change. It really wasn’t all that hard, but I can’t say I would have done it otherwise.

54

I’m not going to let you guys intimidate me into using single spaces between sentences. My typing teacher was very, very strict on the matter, and you’d best not get on her bad side.

55

[QUOTE=groo]
I’m not going to let you guys intimidate me into using single spaces between sentences. My typing teacher was very, very strict on the matter, and you’d best not get on her bad side.
[/QUOTE]
Nobody’s saying you can’t use two spaces after a period on your typewriter. That’s just fine. If you’re using a font designed to imitate typewriting, like Courier, then you can even do it in your word processor.

Just don’t use two spaces after a period on anything that’s supposed to look professionally-produced. To the best of my knowledge, the current editions of every single stylebook agree on this.

56

This is stupid!

The point of computers is to make it easier for people to do their work. Whether you use single or double spaces after a period, it takes only seconds for the computer to standardize all that. Some systems, like HTML, do that by default.

People should concentrate their attention on what they are writing, and not get distracted by on-space/two-space. Leave that for the computer.

57

“I don’t care if it’s a stupid waste of time that’s outmoded by new technology, I’m going to keep on doing it, despite the lack of logic behind it, until the day I die!”

Humans are weird.

58

[QUOTE=Saltire]
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.
[/QUOTE]

Hear, hear! I do the same thing (i.e. find/replace all double spaces with single spaces). Any text that goes through me immediately loses all double spaces.

For the record, I first took a typing class back in 1982 using IBM Selectrics, which were a big improvement over the manual typewriter I had at home. I was also taught to use two spaces after periods. However, folks, that’s because we were using typewriters! Typewriters have monospaced fonts (i.e. all characters have the same width), so you need two spaces between sentences.

However, if you are using a modern word processor with proportional fonts (i.e. the letters have different widths), you only need one space between sentences. Book and magazine publishers use proportional fonts; ergo, they only have one space between sentences. Unless you are using a monospaced font (like Courier), you should do the same.

Check out this link:
http://www.westminster.edu/staff/nak/courses/spaces.htm

59

I’ve always used one space. Using two just looks weird.

60

I was taught two spaces long ago. May have been an American thing, dunno. But I stopped using two spaces some time ago and now use only one. That may be European influence here in Thailand, but it feels like the two-space rule has died away. The only people I know who still use two spaces after a period (full stop) are above a certain age.