How many spaces after a period?

i was raised on 2 and it just makes sense to me. i like a bit of a breath after a sentence. i don't really care to retrain myself at this point in time.

― surm, Thursday, December 15, 2011 8:53 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

as somone who retrained myself not all that long ago i can assure you it's easier than you would think.

― cad, Thursday, December 15, 2011 9:05 PM (2 minutes ago)

yeah this, surprisingly

i used 2 for a while when i was younger, i don't know if someone in college set me straight or i just wised up on my own, but now i can't believe how dumb i was.

i'm like two more '1' votes away from having a Braveheart moment

dude idgi you have no grounds to be upset, you're beyond a shred of a doubt wrong, no one's gonna make you change but at least dealw/it.gif

http://www.yale.edu/spizzwinks/music/discography/2007/2007.jpg

I like how people say "2 because I was taught" as if it makes it less RONG

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0WYjqu9QwE

I think it's like a month so 30?

i was taught 2 but it was obvious even then that was wrong and i've always done 1

TOO BAD YOU CAN'T DO TWO SPACES IN ILX

uhm.  huh.

I think it's like a month so 30?

― є(٥_ ٥)э, Thursday, December 15, 2011 10:39 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

the dad joke force is strong in this one

it's two spaces for fixed-width type. one space otherwise.

― www.myislamicdream.com (step hen faps), Thursday, December 15, 2011 7:37 PM (2 hours ago)

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^x1,000,000,000,000

Have to admit, I get irrationally angry when people who use MS Word or similar to do most/all of their typing insist on using two spaces, which is why I'm not reading any responses in this thread because I love you all and I cannot handle the truth.

This is strange. I was taught two and have never heard anyone say otherwise until, well, tonight.

two is dumb from a bunch of angles one of which that its clearly a hack

One, definitely because 2 is an anachronism left over from typewriters and has no relevance in the word processor/digial age.

Heck HTML means any extras you type online are just gonna disappear anyway.

(unless you force a nbsp which I'm aware you can do with code)

One, definitely because 2 is an anachronism left over from typewriters and has no relevance in the word processor/digial age.

Yeah see I learned how to type on a typewriter at my still in the dark ages all-girls catholic HS. LOL typing was called "business class". Anyway, I didn't even know it was a typewriter thing until tonight. I thought it was how it's done. IDK. I could probably retrain myself not to do it but I don't see why. Nobody's ever said boo about it irl so I figure it's not hurting anyone.

I never learned typing properly either way, Im a raggedy 2-finger typist which surely must be obvious from my myriad hilarious errors on here :D

it's hurting me just knowing

xpost

DEAL WITH IT

I type with all my fingers but not in the right places. I don't have to look at the keys but that's not from that the lol "business" class it's just from years of working in offices and sitting in front of a computer all day.

it's 24-28 days on average. i do tend to feel a bit spacey afterwards.

why would you care either way

I had the fastest typing speed in my third grade class FYI FWIW. just sayin that makes me the ultimate authority on typing.

I always go with <i>The New Yorker</i> style guide.

Bah. The New Yorker.

I never learned typing properly either way, Im a raggedy 2-finger typist which surely must be obvious from my myriad hilarious errors on here :D

― Leave town with an orange, and pretend you're laughing at it. (Trayce), Thursday, December 15, 2011 8:35 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Permalink

WTF!!!?? I am massively disturbed, tbh!

Nobody's ever said boo about it irl so I figure it's not hurting anyone.

You have had the benefit of not having to worry about something you write being published, or else you have had copyeditors who are far more discreet and patient than I am/was.

Like a lot of people I was taught to use 2 spaces. I stopped maybe 5-6 years ago and feel kind of dumb for having done the 2 spaces thing for so long.

I mean, once you read an explanation of why one space is better than two, it's pretty difficult to continue typing 2 spaces and live with yourself

why would you waste precious moments of your life typing all those extra spaces?

http://0.tqn.com/d/desktoppub/1/0/U/S/3/0112endspace.gif

Frankly, I don't think I can see the benefits of two spaces even in the monotype font.

One. Two is abject nonsense. The fact that HTML rendering collapses whitespace has spared all of you two-spacers from embarrassment all this time, by the way.

That's right, you may be double-spacing after your periods but your browser don't care.

WHy are you disturbed Leeeeee!~? Or am I missing some sark ;P

On the other hand TeX automatically inserts some amount of extra space after periods, I should look into adjusting that one of these days…

Apparently in TeX the \frenchspacing macro tells TeX to use the same spacing between words as between sentences.

So one space may be better, but it may also be French.

xpost I thought you worked with computers!

So glad I was never taught two. One for all-time.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html

oh nm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grlOImCXqW0

ONE

when i edited my student magazine i had to send round a very strongly worded email to all contributors telling them they needed to cut that two-spaces shit out

I'd never even heard of using two spaces (or the justification for it) before this thread, though I don't think I've ever used a typewriter either.

ya me neith

Is this an American thing? Come to think of it, my ex-boss, who was American, used to do this all the time.

I'd never even heard of using two spaces (or the justification for it) before this thread

i am sure we have done this thread before.

i did two-spaces in school, and it was very satisfying to double-tap the space bar, but as it is wrong with variable-width fonts i trained myself out of it. One of the ways I recognised that it was wrong was that I noticed that html automatically stripped out the extra space. the other day i had to proof-read something for my momz and you could tell the bits i'd written apart from hers by my lack of extra space - she later went through and painstakingly added the extra space in, and then her editor went through and stripped all of the extra spaces out.

we did this back in real ilx. i think at the time i voted for 2, because i'd been taught that. nowadays i'm strictly a one space soldier

nowadays, don't word processors force an em space after a full stop? that is what i like best bcz i was brought up by a copy of Hart's Rules.

Using two for fixed-width type seems even weirder than for variable-width, to my eyes - it's already open and spacey enough as it is.

iow:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzgGTTtR0kc

YE-YEEAH-AAH

I never could decide
So I just stopped using punctuation
And pressing return instead

6/10/7

Wait so what's the argument other than it's no longer necessary?

― ᶘ ᵒᴥᵒᶅ (~curious orange~), Friday, December 16, 2011 12:07 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Permalink

what it is is:

in typesetting, after a full stop (a full stop that ends a sentence - this does not apply to e.g. the full stops in e.g.) you have a slightly longer space than usual - an em-space. When the typewriter came in, using fixed-width type (i.e. type in which every character is one em wide), people evoked the longer-than-a-usual-space aspect of an em-space by using two spaces rather than one, the same way that people sometimes mimic an em-dash by using a double dash thus: --.

Using a variable-fixed font, the full stop crowds close to the word it follows, giving the impression that there is an em-space following the sentence-final full stop. Some word processors may even impose an em-space after a sentence-ending full-stop in the same way that they impose a capital letter.

They are thus both approximations toward the typographical norm but at present the one-space approximation is more close an approximation.

From the unofficial Typographic 'bible'" The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst he has the following to say:

“In the nineteenth century, which was a dark and inflationary age in typography and type design, many compositors were encouraged to stuff extra space between sentences. Generations of twentieth century typists were then taught to do the same, by hitting the spacebar twice after every period [full stop]. Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit. As a general rule, no more than a single space is required after a period, colon or any other mark of punctuation.”

Sorry for my as usual unchecked first sentence!! I'm sure people more concerned at proof-reading that typography will be hating me as much as using 2 spaces annoys me.

He goes on to say:

"Larger spaces (e.g. en spaces) are themselves punctuation.

The rule is sometimes altered, however, when setting classical Latin and Greek, romanized Sanskrit, phonetics or other kinds of texts in which sentences begin with lowercase letters. In the absence of a capital, a full en space between sentences may be welcome.

"quaint Victorian habit"? lol I am a steampunk!

I was taught to use two spaces, which I did up until a couple years ago when I successfully started using only one.

However, this thread is seriously making me think about switching back to two.

Knock yourself out, if I ever have to set your copy I know how find and replace works.

FIND: ". "
REPLACE: "big fat hairy penis"

These arguments all boil down to "let us not forsake the gods of our fathers" vs. "god is dead, you silly geese".

When learning to write with a pen(cil) while in very early years at school, I remember vaguely being taught one finger width after a comma, two after a full stop. Not with typing though.

That's all very well, but what if you are an elephant?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFpsDAL4oKE

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Poll Results
Option Votes
1 76
2 12

About what I expected.

I use 1 space. In typing class we were taught 2 spaces (1991, on typewriters) and I kept doing it until ~2005 when I was SCHOCKED to learn that the rationale behind 2 spaces didn't apply to most typing on a computer.

It was not difficult at all to retrain myself, though the double-tap on the space bar did feel really satisfying.

Double-tapping two-space trogs is equally satisfying, imo.

I am thinking this poll solves nothing. nothing. the bleak futility of it rises up and threatens to engulf me.

i just got an iphone and i'm worried the period trick is gonna bring back some old habits