How many spaces after a period?

I got an email the other day from someone who put one space BEFORE every fullstop and no spaces afterwards. BONKERS.

^ not how I remember Chuck D's lyric

america is the only place where more than like a dozen people use two spaces afaict.

it's a place with vast unpopulated areas, so no shortage of space to go round.

silby, the space after a fullstop in TeX w/o frenchspacing is not the same amount of space it puts between words within a sentence, but it's pretty much always less than two spaces (unless you're putting long words in narrow columns, in which case you are a savage). i'm white btw.

america is the only place where more than like a dozen people use two spaces afaict.

This could be the case... I'm not super young, I've lived during the age of typewriters, and I've still never heard anything about a two space rule having been used here in Finland.

i skirt around the problem by just never ending my

I was taught two in UK secondary school, and that was just a little over ten years ago! I quickly distanced myself from that savagery, though.

One thing I've heard of being taught in school's lately is to have one space BEFORE a comma. wtf is that?

WHAT? NO. That is not happening.

Any school where that's going on should be burned to the ground.

o crap i pluralised with an apostrophe, they've gotten to me too.

I want to start a poll on how people pluralize/use the possessive w/ nouns that end in s

One thing I've heard of being taught in school's lately is to have one space BEFORE a comma. wtf is that?

this has to be a mistake, why teach something that is no way used anywhere else in the entire galaxy

To make the Klingons think they are travelling backwards.

That is horrifying. How many spaces after a period is not something I care much about, but putting a space before a comma is MADNESS.

I want to start a poll on how people pluralize/use the possessive w/ nouns that end in s

My last name ends in -ss and I am a staunch advocate of 's because then I get -ss's. I want all the sss!

kisses

asses

successes

assesses

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