Back in high school typing class, we learned – to the point of incorporating it into muscle memory, so we never actually thought about it – to type two spaces after a period.
Every time.
Sentences have endings. When I put an ending on a sentence, I type two spaces. It’s that simple. I don’t even think about it. Except now, naturally.
Now, in about 35 years of typing, I can’t say that I’ve ever thought twice about it – with one exception. Back when I worked as a technical writer, I noticed that most word processing and Desktop Publishing software automatically replaced my traditional double-space after a period with a single space.
A single, extra-wide space. To highlight the end of the sentence. Sort of like we did on typewriters, only better.
Oh, yeah -and now. For the past year or two, it’s hard to go more than a few weeks without some major publication writing an article about how typing two spaces after a period is “completely, inarguably wrong“.
This time, it’s Farhad Manjoo:
You’d expect, for instance, that anyone savvy enough to read Slate would know the proper rules of typing, [Hah! – Ed.] but you’d be wrong; every third email I get from readers includes the two-space error. (In editing letters for “Dear Farhad,” my occasional tech-advice column, I’ve removed enough extra spaces to fill my forthcoming volume of melancholy epic poetry, The Emptiness Within.) The public relations profession is similarly ignorant; I’ve received press releases and correspondence from the biggest companies in the world that are riddled with extra spaces.
Might I suggest purchasing one of the many fine apps that handle the typography for you…
…and getting a hobby?
And never, ever writing about this subject again?
“For The Love Of God, Please Make It Stop.”
Full stop.
You can take my end-of-sentence double space from my cold dead keyboard.
I’d like to know who took it upon themselves the declare that the last umpteen years of grammar instruction is now incorrect. Is there some “Chicago Manual of Style” level of creditability publication that is bucking the decades of precedent? Because “some columnist” (formerly) at “Slate” sure as hell doesn’t even come close to that level of creditability. Or is this just another hipster movement?
It boggles the mind that someone so in love with doing “chicken manure” exercises like counting the spaces after the end of a sentence does not manage to find a job somewhere in the federal bureaucracy. Seriously, aren’t there better hobbies than this? And, of course, I made SURE that I used the old typewriting standard of two spaces after a period or question mark in this comment, just to honor our gracious host.
Farhad Manjoo born 1978. Probably never had the pleasure of operating an old manual Remington or Smith Corona, or a IBM Selectric for that matter. The word processor he uses does the hard work (and thinking) for him. I doubt he knows what white out is. I probably went through gallons of it over the years….sigh Oh by the way, I still double space.
New title suggestion:
“The Emptiness Within … My Head”
Especially with respect to new column ideas.
Original article was from 2011.
Its stuff like this that will make random people start snapping one day. My response to him would be, “Who the fuck are you, shut up and go back to writing article about how Obama can save his legacy.”
and while I’m not necessarily advocating violence here it would be nice if this prick got punched squarely in the face to possibly knock some common sense into him. And give him the same headache we all get from reading such tripe.
Heh, PoD, like they say, a new Republican convert is a former Democrat who got mugged.
Recently I visited the Library of Congress and saw their Gutenberg Bible. Think of the effort it took to set the type, print each page, bind, etc. And yet Gutenberg revolutionized the world compared to each hand written Bible some monk agonized over for months (also on display nearby).
A little less than thirty years ago, my textbooks in high school and later college weighed roughly five pounds each and I had to carry at least one for each class and I took three or four classes before I could go back to my locker to store the books I didn’t need. Today, all the books needed are on a 12 oz. tablet that the kids have given to them (which they primarily use to shoot cartoon birds at cartoon pigs).
Along comes a millennial to complain that the two-space between sentences is just too taxing on his psyche.
The downside to this poor fellows complaint – there are thousands if not millions of millennials just like him that spend a lot of their time on line bitching about this and other trivialities that we non-millennials may just go insane.
The upside – think about when Obamacare and all these other centrally planned government programs go full blown. The two-space will be the least of the millenials problems. One can just imagine (it’s easy if you try) hearing from their I-pods, I-phones, I-pads and I-whatevers now… “You say you want a revolution”…
The interesting thing is style books were written by newspaper people involved with typesetters and later revised when the linotype was replaced by the Macintosh. Has nothing to do with people typing at home, in the basement, in their pajamas, on the internet.
I like footnotes as opposed to in-text citations. Footnotes are going away (at least in APA), they are just too difficult to format consistently with word processors, browsers, ebook readers,and the typesetting software used by publishers.
In-text citations break scansion for the reader and the writer has to mangle his sentence structure to work them in. Another curse of modernity, people serve machines, not the other way around.
Hi Mitch, on the topic of grammar I am attempting to learn German using Pimsleur(they have the complete course at the Library) and an app called duo lingo.
Any tips on keeping the verbs, adverbs, and adjectives straight?
Is there anyone who writes for Slate who isn’t a raging asshole?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/08/12/icebucketchallenge_you_don_t_need_an_ice_bucket_to_donate_to_als_research.html