Budget cut forces major change in word processing

[Perd Hapley]

Apparently, the economy is so bad that we can no longer afford more than one space between sentences.  Let's hope it doesn't cost too much to retrain our thumbs. 

But seriously, why and when did we abandon proper spacing between sentences?  I've been noticing this for years, but I just thought people didn't know what they were doing.  Apparently it's the going thing, though. 

What gives? 

[Ben]

I don't know what you're talking about.
Is this something you read in Junior Writer's Journal?


Perhaps you can explain what exactly you mean.





Is this just some kind of pet peeve?

Please elaborate.

[Perd Hapley]

A pet peeve, but I also like to know when a sentence ends, without looking really close to see whether the period has a tail on it.  Using two spaces between sentences just seems obvious to me.  And that's the way I learned it.  That was the standard for untold generations of typists and word processors, right?

But no longer.  Pay attention, and you'll notice that there's seldom more than one space between sentences these days.  My Gigantic Book of Office 2007 tells me this is the new standard. 

Let's hope it's just a phase. 

[Standing Wolf]

But seriously, why and when did we abandon proper spacing between sentences?  I've been noticing this for years, but I just thought people didn't know what they were doing.  Apparently it's the going thing, though.

Sorry, but English language typography has never included double spaces, nor spaces before punctuation marks, nor multiplying punctuation marks. Adding an extra space after each period and colon was a typewriter convention that supposedly made pages easier to read. It was never adopted by typesetters for the clear and simple good reason it's ugly.

My Gigantic Book of Office 2007 tells me this is the new standard.

Once again, Microsoft gets the facts wrong.

[Balog]

I've never heard of double spacing after a sentence.

[Ben]

Ha ha. I love when I completely screw up on a joke because I don't pay the least bit of attention and act like a sentence is a paragraph. 

[Perd Hapley]

Once again, Microsoft gets the facts wrong.

Prentice Hall publishers, actually. 


Sorry to get you all hot-and-bothered, so you have to begin your remarks with "Sorry, but."  If the typesetters have been single-spacing, then I guess you told me something I didn't know.  Thanks.  But it's "ugly"?  You have got to be kidding about that one.

[French G.]

The military stylistically insists upon two spaces after a period. Only place I've been forced to do that.

[RocketMan]

It looks like a cold day in Hades, as I actually agree with fistful on this one.  Back in the day I was taught to use two spaces after a period, too.

[lupinus]

I was taught to double space after a period as well.  It's about the only grammar rule I remember.  Figures that it was wrong 

[zahc]

Only old people think you are supposed to double-space after sentences. It's like people who think you are supposed to pump the accelerator pedal a couple times before starting a car.

Double-spacing makes no sense unless you are using a monospaced font, or an old typewriter.

I have half an english degree and as of about 2005, double-spaces between sentences solicited red marks from english professors.

[RocketMan]

Only old people...

Wait right there, you little whippersnapper, you, while I go get my cane to beat you with. 

[Typhoon]

Yeah, I was taught to double space after periods as well.  I’ve been doing it for years.  I’m doing it now.  Then I went to graduate school, and all papers had to be submitted in APA format, which specifically mandates one space after periods.  What a pain when I needed to crank out a 20 page paper. 

Most profs didn’t care, but there is always the one anal-retentive hard a** (I mean hard case) that deducted points for silly crap like that.  Thank heavens for search and replace.

***Product endorsement***  If anyone ever needs to use APA or MLA format for college papers, Dr Paper from The Write Direction is a godsend. http://thewritedirection.net/drpaper/ It’s a downloadable snap-in for Word (and WordPerfect, although I never used it in WP) that formats both the paper and citations.  What a timesaver!  Best $20 I’ve spent in a long while.

Oh.  And I ain’t that old. 

[Perd Hapley]

You can search and replace your double-spaced periods to single-space?!  Sweet.

[Brad Johnson]

I have half an english degree and as of about 2005, double-spaces between sentences solicited red marks from english professors.

If that truly is the case then your "professors" need to go back to school.  Double spaces have been the standard grammatic convention for decades, especially in the more technical professions.  Get into a scientific field, one where papers live and die by the APA format, and you'll find your "engrish perfessers" have done you a huge disservice.  I've personally witnessed grad students with otherwise stellar academic careers almost competely derailed because they were undable to properly format or compose a simple research paper.  Their undergrad classes left them woefully unprepared for the real world, and for professors who graded on actual results.

FYI - Typesetters use single spaces after periods for expediency and economy of space, not aesthetics or grammatic correctness.  Depending on article length, eliminating that space gives anything from a few words to a few pages worth of extra content.

Brad

[Typhoon]

Ummm...Actually, my APA style guide indicates that one space should be used after periods.  As did the aforementioned hard case professor, in whose class I learned that the search and replace feature in Word allowed me to type papers normally and then correct after the fact.

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

Latest technical writing prof (hard case) demanded a single space. I think she said something along the lines that MS Word automatically added the double space after a period. Or something of the kind.

[roo_ster]

Only old people think you are supposed to double-space after sentences. It's like people who think you are supposed to pump the accelerator pedal a couple times before starting a car.

Nah, just makes it more readable to humans.  When doing automated text processing, it can cuase problems, though, if one does not $sed 's/  / /g' first

Double-spacing makes no sense unless you are using a monospaced font, or an old typewriter.

Courier is my fave font, thanks.

I have half an english degree and as of about 2005, double-spaces between sentences solicited red marks from english professors.

Like many a codger has said, "They don't make them like they used to..."

[K Frame]

"Apparently, the economy is so bad that we can no longer afford more than one space between sentences.  Let's hope it doesn't cost too much to retrain our thumbs."

Jesus...

As Standing Wolf indicates, double spacing began in the days of the first typewriters as a means of giving a visual clue to where the sentences ended in a paragraph.

Typewriters then, and not until the later days of typewriters when IBM finally got the design for such a machine right, did not provide proportional spacing between letters - everything is spaced the same.

Since modern typewriters and virtually ever word processor since the earliest ones have proportional spacing encoded in their controls (mechanical or software), the double space at the end of a sentence is no longer needed.

Even worse, with modern layout and design programs, a double space after a sentence can actually throw an entire paragraph's spacing off. IBM's Ventura publisher was particularly nasty in this regard.

OH, and just FYI, the first Government Printing Office Style Manual to deal specifically with electronic publishing was the 1985 edition. It specifically states that there is to be a SINGLE space after a period specifically because of the ability of the new machines to proportionally space letters.

[K Frame]

"I think she said something along the lines that MS Word automatically added the double space after a period. Or something of the kind."

No version of Word I've ever used has done that automatically.

It's possible that it's wrapped into one of the tools or options choices. Well, I just quickly went through all of the options tabs in my copy of Word 2003, and that's not a feature that I can find.

[Perd Hapley]

"Apparently, the economy is so bad that we can no longer afford more than one space between sentences.  Let's hope it doesn't cost too much to retrain our thumbs."

Jesus...

Can someone please unwind Mike a little bit?  Yikes. 

I apologize for failing to know the whole history of publishing, type-setting, typewriters, etc. 

[MechAg94]

I learned the double spacing in typing class many years ago.  I still do it.  In the technical writing class I took in college, the professor's opinion was readability was everything.  If anything makes it harder for the reader to stay focused, it needs to be changed.  To him, that meant more white space between lines, shorter paragraphs, subtitles, shorter sentences, simply language, or anything that allowed the reader to flow through the material without thinking about it.  The Word grammar check for passive sentences helped me out a great deal in that class. 

I think I have had Word flag my double spacing with its grammar editor before, but that was a while back.  It hasn't done it recently. 

I have seen it done both ways, but I don't really care.  I just like to do it my way.  :)

[K Frame]

"Can someone please unwind Mike a little bit?  Yikes."

Can someone please unwind you so that you don't look at every little change as a personal affront and an insult to God and the American way of life?

What next, a bitch festival about how civilization has crumbled because not everything is in courier anymore?

[K Frame]

"In the technical writing class I took in college, the professor's opinion was readability was everything."

Readability is everything...

UNTIL you start delivering documents electronically, and those documents contain strings of machine code that are to be copied and pasted from the document into a server command file where an extra space will cause the process to fail dismally, leading to phone calls to the help desk about a failed installation procedure.

Extraneous characters kill processes and stop systems.

Some months ago one of the SAs on one of our systems decided just to type the code from an update index in by hand right into the production servers and launch it without going through the standardized process of installing it on the test servers first and then replicating to the production servers.

He'd apparently been screwing around on the internet earlier that day because he added a few / characters at the end of command strings where they decided were not to be added.

The resulting shut down was VERY messy, leading to lots of very hostile calls from users, his bosses, him, and at least one call from a very important man with two stars on his shoulder boards.

His contention was that he entered our code just as we had supplied it. After a couple of hours of trouble shooting we finally figured out that he was a complete and utter moron and that our code was fine.

Simple matter is that in today's world of proportional spacing and automatic justification, extra spaces don't do a thing for readability simply because the system's programming changes the kerning on those spaces based on what is going on with the rest of the line of text.

[Regolith]

I picked up the double space habit sometime around high school, probably from an older teacher who had more experience with typewriters than word processors.  My styles handbook does indeed mention that it is no longer standard, but force of habit is hard to break.  In any case, I've made it almost completely all the way through college without anyone calling me on it or even mentioning it, though I never took a technical writing course.