Ever since I first learned to type in elementary school, in the mid ’90s, I have been using 2 spaces after periods. Recently, I have noticed that many people do not do this and am curios why.
I have a feeling that I was simply caught between generations; I was taught by a teacher that learned to type on a typewriter. Typewriters used a fixed width font, much like programmers today, and an extra space after every period was necessary for the eye to easily pick up the new sentence.
Modern word processors only require one stroke of the space bar to provide adequate space after a period. On the internet, most browsers will only render 1 space, even if there is 2 spaces in the code, unless “%nbsp” is used.
I have developed the habit of ‘double spacing’, and I do not plan on trying to break it. I will simply remain the victim of a generation overlap and keep working my space bar twice as hard.
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2 Comments on this post
Leave a CommentI was told by someone who teaches word processing for a living that the ‘double space after a period’ rule doesn’t apply to most modern word processing programs, as they add the second space automatically. I know versions of Microsoft Word up until 2004 did this, but I haven’t used any recent versions so I don’t know if this is still the case. Apple’s Pages software adds the second space automatically, too.
Comment left on 11.22.2007 by Cecily
I guess I am going to have to ditch the habit. Imagine all of the time that I’ll save by only tapping the space bar once.
Comment left on 11.22.2007 by admin