- One Space
- Two Spaces
0 voters
MS Word now defaults to one space after a period between sentences.
I adhere to my typing rules from my high school typing class on an electric IBM typewriter.
2 spaces after “:”, too.
It’s the 21st Century. I miss typewriters, but the double-space after periods addressed a specific issue which was resolved by word-processing decades ago.
That said, I still double space before the Zip code when writing to US mailing addresses (what few times I do that these days)
5 Likes
Out of curiosity: what was that issue?
Guy
In my high school typing class, I was told that it was for readability and to distinguish between sentences.
I have fond memories of typing class. I took it over the summer and ended up spending most of my time doing what we now call ASCII Art
3 Likes
Typewriter writing doesn’t auto-kern like word processor programs so the double space was needed to more clearly indicate the end of a sentence.
A shit ton of legal document templates still require double spaces, so fuck Word.
2 Likes
Merci!
Guy
The rule, which I learned 25 years ago while working for a trade magazine publishing company, is:
Double-space after a period or colon for fixed-width fonts like Courier.
Single-space after a period or colon for variable-width fonts like Times New Roman.
Since most people today use word processors and variable-width fonts, there’s no need to double space.
I too had it drilled into my head in my high school typing class that you double-space after a period and a colon. I had to unlearn that habit. Does anyone still use a typewriter?
By the way, does Word allow you to turn off that correction? I’d imagine you could customize it.
2 Likes
I happily gave up the double-space for single-space after college.
But I will not let go of… comma after second to last word in list. If you list 4 things then you have 3 commas.
1 Like
The Oxford Comma!
I also add 's after all possesive nouns, including this ending in the letter S (is the Strunk & White?)
Tom Hanks
2 Likes
Yeah!
When I took typing in high school, it was way before computers were common, and it was almost all girls except for the odd boy (usually very odd) who wanted to go into writing or reporting. It was assumed that any guy in business would just have his office girl do the typing.
