Not really--there are people in my office who do it. When we collaborate I use find and replace to remove all the double spaces. But this is still amusing: http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/last-human-to-use-two-spaces-after-a-full-stop-dies-20180312145785
That's hilarious. I still catch myself doing it now and then, because as a teenager I was in that weird transition as newspapers switched computers instead of typewriters and entering copy into a typesetting machine. The typesetting machine required double spaces, and I typed a lot of stuff into that beast before we got computerized layout the next year.
Yeah, I still do it, too. It was what I was taught to do in my high school typing class and it stuck. Though for all the blogs and rants I've read against it, I've never had anyone in any profession ever call it out as any kind of wrong so I'll probably stick with it until someone says something because I actually prefer the way it looks and makes editing easier on me.
Yeah, I've never been called out on it, either, now that you mention it. At least you're consistent about it!
I'm curious now as to who that's with. I was looking through all of the submission guidelines I had around, but most of them pretty much just specified 12 point, double spaces, one side only. Most of the magazines I submit to direct me to William Shunn's Manuscript guide which says: " In the days of typewriters, the usual practice was to put two spaces after the end of every sentence, and also to put two spaces after every colon. This helped make the separations between sentences more apparent, and helped editors more easily distinguish periods from commas and colons from semicolons. With the dominance of computers, that practice is changing, and it is more common now to see only one space between sentences. Ingrained habits die hard, though, so if you’re used to hitting the spacebar twice after a period, you shouldn’t stress out about it, particularly if you’re using a Courier font." So it doesn't really say one way or the other, though I'm guessing the preference is for one space. And reading through my style guides for school, MLA specifies one space at the end of sentences, but APA recommends two. So I guess for scholarly writing it also depends on what classes you're taking.
Yeah, it's leftover from typewriters having all letters use exactly the same amount of space (is that kerning? I forget), so it was necessary to use a doubled space to make it easier to see where sentences ended. When I learned to type, word-count was done on a per-line basis, don't remember exactly, but I think Pica type was defined as twelve words per line, and Elite was fifteen. Of course, that was in 1984 or so, so I may have switched the fonts and the numbers are suspect also, but I only learned of the "single space after a period thing" when I was fighting my students to double and one of them brought in a textbook from a previous class to drag me into the electronic age with. They should really issue bulletins when this sort of linguistic shift occurs
All that is ringing a bell. I think you have it correct and that Pica was larger. I remember having some sort of Pica ruler in the desk drawer of the office, although now I don't remember how / when it was used. To count characters for manual pasteups for column widths perhaps.
I still do it. But we are the last generation with adult handwriting, some compensation surely. Which reminds me of my rage first time I read the word 'curlicue' in a Raymond Carver. 'Curlicue,' although I didn't know the word back then - was for decades the primary indicator of psychopathy in handwriters, [actually not 'curlicue,' he means roundall, circular Lady Di type graphics] ...likewise the techies'spider sometimes known as scientist's arachnid finger. Obstacles that for centuries kept those people away from the written word. Barriers that were once established and obvious. They had their numbers and we had our words. But now, since the new great hegemony of the Star Wars Hobbit Potter - Arts has become a free market, and they are among us, wielding the whip hand even over last pen and pencil adherents, and sometimes laptop, very very tragic their victory in this matter. Viva Resistance [see also 'Grandma's shiver.']
I remain a staunch double-spacer. Not going to let it go either. Don't care. I also write complete words, use all punctuation, and correct majuscules in text messages, which is a MUCH bigger deal in Spanish than it is in English. I actually like that I was born at a time where this kind of flux is in play. In my dottage at the nursing home, the kindly young people (who now all speak Emojinese) will think me quaint in a fedora hat sort of way.
I do this as well. People sometimes poke fun at me (kindly) for doing it in text messages, but that’s fine. The publication I’m editor of wants one space after a full stop and that predates my tenure, so it can’t be blamed on me
I still double-space after periods, etc., because, word processing fonts or not, it still looks better. And clearer. At least, I think so. Now, for the paper version of my novel I've sucked it up and gotten rid of the second space. The need to keep the page count down triumphs over my sense of aesthetics. (The ebook software takes it out automatically.) EDIT: Come to notice it, the software on this site does, too. Annoying.
It still looks odd to me. More so in some fonts than others, which is why I strip it out of work documents. I think the Chicago Manual of Style suggests one space. I’m not sure if the California Style Guide takes a position, but I’ve never known the courts here to complain about a single space.
Chicago is one, and has been for decades, probably because it conserved space for column inches of newspapers and made the columns look neater in pasteup back when it was done manually. I'm pretty sure APA is one space as well but don't quote me on that.
I think so: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/two-spaces-after-a-period Interesting about typesetters’ use of multiple sizes of single spaces. I didn’t know that.
A lot of the stylebooks' rules came about because of the difficulties of manual typesetting. I was in the last generation to learn manual pasteup (I was in the crossover to computerized layout), and in my first newswriting class the first thing my prof did was throw the Freshman Comp 101 textbook on the floor and say "When you are here, pay no attention to the comma rules in this!" For example, I was always told by old newspaper guys that newspapers used a lot fewer commas to make it faster for the guys who set the type, because they're tiny and difficult to handle and slow things down as you face them the correct way. (Also, there would have been a good possibility of running out of commas in the typesetters' trays because you'd need so many of them.) Conversely, having had to exacto knife and wax paste a tiny comma neatly into an edit when I had to shorten paragraphs for space limitations during pasteup, that was no damn fun! ETA: If anyone wants a feel for what manual pasteup was like, print out a paragraph three inches wide in Times New Roman, 14 point, then cut it out straight into a few sections, and paste it onto a piece of paper with a glue stick, neat and straight. Now cut out a comma and try to insert it in the middle of a sentence and get that straight, and make sure all your lines of type are straight and not wonky. And imagine that instead of glue stick, the "glue" you're using is to dip your lines of type into a vat of melted sticky wax. That was how I used to put together the entertainment pages of our local newspaper. We had layout paper that had faint blue lines on it to help line things up but it was still a bitch and I was never fast at it.
Considering that neither most word processor or a web browser actually has a typesetter, I always prefer double spacing. I have a question for people who know more about the typesetting though. Does an editor really have to go through and set the type correctly? For example "Mr. Johnson was mad. His face was red." Will look weird if you just fed that into a typesetter. You'd have to convert it to "Mr\@. Johnson was mad. His face was red." FYI, you can also use \frenchspacing to have your typesetter ignore double spaces. (I assume most literature is typeset using LaTeX too? Academic papers are always TeX.)
If you're submitting articles, it doesn't matter what you prefer. The publication's stylebook is God. Actually, the type of typesetter we used didn't require coding, as I recall, so I have no clue. I wasn't the fastest typist, and was far better at pasteup. Sometimes I'd sit next to the person doing the typesetting (who, if that was his sole job, was called the typesetter) and read him the articles because he went faster hearing them than reading them. If it was our editor in the seat, that was fun because we'd get punchy around 2 AM, and he'd start making up hilarious, obscene fake sections of the articles, which we'd have to cut out of the printed text if he forgot to delete them. The typesetter was called a phototypesetter and was a big blue machine the size of a piano, with an attached swing away stool, a tiny little word processing screen, and an attached keyboard. We typed in the articles, and it sent them to a printer that printed out the text in our font in a narrow column, which was in Times 14. Then we'd go back and do all the headlines as a batch, because you could only do one font and point size at at time. Then we cut them apart with an exacto blade, waxed them, and pasted them up. I think headlines were in...Helvetica? I don't remember the point size. It was a long time ago, and less than a year in, we switched over to Macs and...Pagemaker?
I accidentally called someone out on it once. The first time I came across it I was confused - didn't know it was a 'thing' - so I asked the author of the document why he'd done it. I thought he might need a new keyboard. Every legit publisher will use one space after a full stop. They probably won't reject you for using two (although it's a bad idea to deviate from standard manuscript formatting for a submission - makes you look amateur), but it will be changed before the manuscript is published.
I was stuck putting two spaces after periods for the longest damn time, thanks to my Middle School computer teacher. He forced us to put two spaces after periods, and it stuck with me for the longest god damned it.
I was taught to do it in high school, kept the habit up through college. Once I was in professional life I finally dragged the habit out into the back yard and put two well-deserved bullets in its head.
