“You Can Have My Double Space When You Pry it From My Cold, Dead Hands”
With apologies to Tom Levenson (who would appreciate it if you would fetch him his smelling salts since, after reading the title of this post, he has the vapors), I must confess that I’m on Team McArdle — at least when it comes to her penchant for double spaces after sentences:
I was going to write something on why Farhad Manjoo’s polemic on the double space after a period is dead wrong. But Tom Lee’s piece on the topic is so superlatively better than what I would have written that I will just turn the mike over to him:
For now let’s ignore the ignore the bullying nature of this argument (it should be obvious to anyone that those of us who believe in two spaces are a minority that’s relentlessly and mercilessly persecuted by the bloodthirsty masses, both through jeremiads like Manjoo’s and through the technological eradication of our ability to express our beliefs). Which of the points in the above argument are rhetorically meaningful?***
…
Manjoo’s argument about beauty, like all such arguments, is easy enough to dismiss: I disagree. I find it easier to read paragraphs that are composed of sentences separated by two spaces. Perhaps this is because I, like most technologists, spend most of my time working with (quite lovely!) fixed-width fonts for practical reasons. But there’s also a deeper beauty to the two space rule — a sort of mathematical beauty. Let me explain.
Consider the typical structure of writing. Letters are assembled into words, which turn into phrases, which are arranged into sentences — at the same time being assigned to speakers, a neat trick — which are then combined into paragraphs.
It’s a chemical process, a perfect and infinitely flexible hierarchical system that should command our admiration. Being able to rationally examine, disassemble and interrogate the final product is a mark of the system’s beauty. Anything less is settling for a sort of holistic mysticism.
It’s disrespectful to let writing’s constituent elements bleed into one another through imprecise demarcations. If you see me “making mistakes with comma placement”, please rest assured that I’m doing it deliberately. In most cases the comma doesn’t belong to the phrase delimited by the quotation marks that enclose it. Placing an exclamation point or question mark to the left or right of a close-quote is a weighty decision! That we violate the atomic purity of quotations with injected commas is an outrage.
I’m a stickler for spacing. I can scan a document and easily point out the sentences that are spaced improperly. (Yes, single spacing between sentences is improper in my World ‘o Grammar.) Every lawyer I know uses double spaces. I just grabbed a couple books from the shelf, and each has double spaces after sentences. I don’t know a single person who is a proponent of single spaces after sentences. Who are these fabled single spacers? Where are they? And why are they so wrong?
Also (while we’re on the subject), please consider this post my official grammar-related call to arms: Anyone who wants to join my fight against the improper use of myself, please feel free to e-mail myself. It drives myself crazy when people use it incorrectly.
Also, too, please consider this a grammar open thread.
***The italicized portion did not appear in McArdle’s article, but I thought it important to draw attention to the blood libel that we Double-Spacers suffer each and every day.
freelancer
Just went down a peg, ABL, I’m so sad for you right now.
As far as McArglebargle is concerned, even if it’s just a matter of opinion, she still digresses into excuse-making for her reasoning. She can’t just be like, “I prefer the double-space” and have that be the end of it.
She has to deconstruct it like “Well I do it because I learned to type on a typewriter unlike some people, and even if I didn’t it’d still be something not worth addressing, and speaking of addressing such issues independently, this guy needs to get a life, because I have one. Also, sometimes I hit the space twice if I have hiccups.”
Even if I agree with you, fuck you for writing and sounding like a toddler. How fucking hard is it to be a person, much less a professional? (aimed at Mc, not you ABL, just so you know.)
Angry Black Lady
my how the mighty hath fallen.
::solitary tear::
Angry Black Lady
@freelancer: you’re a single spacer? i had you pegged as a double spacer. (i don’t even know what that means.)
matt
Use TeX and forget about this issue, except for sentences that end with capital letters.
PurpleGirl
ABL: Look at any thing from Matthew Bender. It was house style back to the late 1970s to use one space between sentences. No ands, ifs or buts. And the computer type setting program they brought in during the mid-1980s changed it automatically if 2 spaces were put in. They said it saved space and money. (I worked as a copyeditor for Bender in the mid-80s.)
JRon
I wonder why her post doesn’t have double spacing after sentences then. hmm.
I have to agree with you. also after a colon: two spaces.
However I’m trying to break the habit since my posts on my own blog don’t format right unless I only use one.
update: and my double-spacing is gone. I guess wordpress doesn’t like it either.
jl
ANCIENTGREEKSWROTELIKETHISANDSOSHOULDWE.THEADVENTOFTHESPACEWASTHECAUSEOFTHEDECLINEOFCIVILIZATION.
Ija
But when you use “Justify”, using double spacing sometimes creates too much empty space between sentences. It’s not pretty.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
I can’t understand it either, but I imagine it’s about wanting a block of text vs something that is easier to parse into individual sentences. I’m sure single-spacing is more aesthetically pleasing, but it definitely doesn’t make it easy to follow long paragraphs.
mistermix
I spend my day looking at monotype fonts, so the thought of using one space after a period hadn’t even dawned on me.
Angry Black Lady
@JRon: the html strips out the spacing! i’m not happy about it.
Blogreeder
Morzer will be thrilled.
gogol's wife
I’m with you all the way.
Omnes Omnibus
My wife, a former effete European, learned single spacing in her (at one point, literally) commie school system. We have disagreed on it often. I finally converted her to two spaces and then she saw the Manjoo piece. Single spaces separate words and phrases, double spaces separate sentences, and a line break separates paragraphs. BTW I also believe in the Oxford comma.
Arclite
Learned the double space after period in typing class 30 years ago. Vastly prefer it as a visual aid to demark sentences. I always use it, as you can tell from this comment.
Restrung
@jl:
Awesome in at least two ways.
edit: add “That was” to the beginning, and de-capitalize the “A” in “awesome”. Better? OK, that’s not a sentence. Is “OK” done with 2 capitals, and is “two” preferable to 2? maybe I should have quoted “2.”
freelancer
@Angry Black Lady:
“Well, it’s like the Capulets and the Montagues!” (rolls eyes)
Lesley
“Megan McArdle Gets Something Right”
Who gives a shit when 99.9% of the time she’s sociopathically dead WRONG. #ignore
(Sorry, couldn’t resist. I don’t see the point of paying attention to meatheads like McMeghan who once in a blue moon might “get something right.” She doesn’t deserve the attention.
robertdsc-PowerBook
I just wish people learned to fucking spell.
Meganomalous
As the proud possessor of a degree in English, I can safely say that single-spacing is perfectly acceptable. Double spacing, however, is unnecessary and a chore. If you miss a single space whilst typing in your word processor or blog comment box, no biggie–a red underline will promptly alert you to the problem. But if you accidentally put a single space after a period in a sea of double spaces? Good luck finding it, if you’re even aware of it. Your piece of writing has lost all consistency and, thus, credibility. Fact.
Darkrose
But when you use “Justify”, using double spacing sometimes creates too much empty space between sentences. It’s not pretty.
This. When you’re using non-monotype fonts and justifying, you get too much space. Many blog clients actually convert double spaces to a single space, unless you force it to do otherwise.
I started single-spacing after I read “The Mac Is Not A Typewriter” back in the day. Now, it’s habit; it’s just like the way I’ve gone from using “em” instead of “i” for italics.
trollhattan
If you lurve the double space then spec a fixed pitch type such as Courier. Otherwise, it’s a single space, always, as has been the typesetting standard since…forevah.
Also, too, ditch the last comma in a serial list, unless needed for clarity.
–A publications dude
Mike M
Putting two spaces after the period at the end of the sentence is a hangover from the days of fixed-space typewriters. The practice is obsolete, even if some people cling to it out of force of habit. It is no longer needed to ensure readability.
Modern word processing and page layout programs use sophisticated algorithms for adjusting the spacing of characters, words, and sentences on the page for optimal readability or to suit the preferences of a graphic artist.
J.W. Hamner
@Ija:
Yes, double spacing after periods totally screws up justified text and is why I don’t do it… but almost nobody on the internet uses anything but “ragged right,” so I’m not sure we’ll get much traction here.
However, I totally support opening a new front in The War on Typesetting by advocating for the aesthetic and moral superiority of justified text.
Twisted_Colour
It’s strange to be in agreement with McMegan. I remember Mrs Schade, my high school typing teacher, whacking me with a metre ruler as punishment for not using a double space after a sentence.
Mrs Schade also drove a Ford Cobra which was way cool for a catholic high school teacher in Australia in the ’80s.
Lysana
I studied computer-based typography in college. That is where the single space arose, computer fonts. It looks tighter and better with a single space when you type on a computer. Double-space only works for typewriters. Sticking to double-space so doggedly is like insisting on connecting all the letters when you print because you connect them when you write in longhand. It’s the wrong place for it.
el donaldo
If you use a typewriter, put two spaces after the period.* If you’re like the rest of us, the fact that you’re using a wordprocessing client means that the second space is not only unnecessary and excessive, it’s visually unappealing.
*I wonder if Wendell Berry is still refusing to buy his wife a PC. http://home.btconnect.com/tipiglen/berrynot.html
matt
too bad the kerning experts don’t read this blog.
Pam C./femlaw
What saith the Blue Book? Don’t have mine to hand.
My recollection from law journal editing (which is getting towards 20 years ago now) is that we all Double Spaced. But I could be wrong . . .
Regardless, somehow I am deeply programmed to Double Space and I think my fingers would refuse to do otherwise now.
morzer
I don’t want you to fight against improperly using yourself. In fact, I want to watch!
dmsilev
Just about any decent word processor will put a bit of extra space between sentences for you. Hell, TeX was doing that as far back as the mid 80s or thereabouts.
The only time I ever double-space is when typing on my iThing. Hitting space twice is a shortcut for “Insert period, one space, and capitalize the next letter”. Very convenient on a touch-screen keyboard.
dms
John - A Motley Moose
It’s actually immaterial for bloggers, since html automatically strips out extra spaces. If you want additional spaces you have to insert a non-breaking space. I’m with Manjoo on this, although it’s difficult to accept him as a punctuation expert given his unnecessary use of semi-colons and colons in this piece. My pet peeve is the omission of the serial comma.
freelancer
@Lysana:
A thousand times THIS.
Chris Wolf
TL,DR
Ija
@J.W. Hamner:
I was thinking more of Word documents than the Internet actually. But actually, that’s a good point, why don’t more people on the web use Justify? Is it the default setting or something to use right ragged? We should start a revolution. Yes we Justify, people.
Blogreeder
@robertdsc-PowerBook:
I feel for you! I don’t think it’s going to get any better with all this texting. I know I sound like an old fogey but it’s true.
RAM
Double spacing went out when IBM introduced the Selectric typewriter. Double spacing was necessary when letters were monospaced, but with the Selectric, letters were spaced typographically with variable spacing (also called proportional spacing), depending on the width of the letter, just like they were on old hot-lead typesetting machines.
When phototypesetting machines were introduced by companies like Compugraphic, hot lead was out, but single spacing after periods, along with other cool typograpic things like M and N spaces, could be produced on long strips of photo paper that were waxed and pasted down on layout sheets to be photographed for offset plate making.
The genius of Apple Laserwriter printers was that they, too, produced variable spaced type with relatively cheap word processing software, and since they set the industry standard, double spacing after periods was dead for ever–or at least it was for anyone not using the Courier or other really ugly monospaced fonts. Those of us who were used to pounding out copy on upright typewriters had to train ourselves NOT to double space after periods. The typesetters had been doing it for generations, so it wasn’t all that hard to learn to do. After all, we were all typesetters then anyway. No more hot lead, no more Compugraphic photo typesetters, no more Headliner machines. Thank God.
Double spacing after periods is still acceptable if you happen to dig out that old Royal portable from the attic to write your resume for that COBOL job you saw in the Help Wanted listing. But that’s about it.
Blogreeder
@freelancer:
LOL!
Redshift
If McArdle would write about nothing but typesetting nitpicks, I’d happily agree with just about any damn thing she wants to say.
joel hanes
I am astounded to find myself agreeing with Ms. McArdle.
I like two spaces after the period because that’s what I like.
Table Talk
Granted, we die for good.
Life, then, is largely a thing
Of happens to like, not should.
And that, too, granted, why
Do I happen to like red bush,
Grey grass and green-gray sky?
What else remains? But red,
Gray, green, why those of all?
That is not what I said:
Not those of all. But those.
One likes what one happens to like.
One likes the way red grows.
It cannot matter at all.
Happens to like is one
Of the ways things happen to fall.
– Wallace Stevens, 1935
Restrung
I’ve always done (space, space) at the end of a sentence because I learned it in typing class in ’84. PERIOD. [ ]
What’s the big freakin’ deal? Hell, it’s on my rez, and I got an offer anyway.
I am bothered, however, by too many commas. And I use double-dashes because David Brancaccio said the same to Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. in what might be Kurt’s last interview.
BGinCHI
Just changed my syllabi for the semester:
“Please ensure that you McArdle between sentences.
And remember, if you have to do the other McArdle, the restrooms are next to the stairwell.”
Thanks ABL!
jacy
Double spacing is for typewriters. Single spacing at the end of a sentence is the formatting standard and has been for a long, long time. Take it from someone who learned the double space in junior high typing and had to painfully unlearn it for manuscript formatting.
There’s really no reason to double space at the end of a sentence unless you’re pounding out your missives on an old Underwood. And let me tell you, it’s damned hard to find ribbons for those things.
shortstop
@John – A Motley Moose:
Get over that with all due speed, haste and rapidity.
I have some clients who prefer the SC and some who don’t. I occasionally have to stop and think about which is which.
Redshift
@Blogreeder: Yep. A teenage relative already thought I was being extremely formal because I used periods and capitalization in IMs. And if I was still using double spacing, fitting stuff in 140 characters would be that much harder!
EIGRP
I put triple spaces at the end of paragraphs.
shortstop
Also, too…
@John – A Motley Moose:
Yeah, Benen was affirming his love for the single space slightly stridently the other day. Since he leaves critical, context-changing words out of pretty much every other sentence and misspells simple words galore in the rest, it’s a little hard to take the outrage seriously.
suzanne
In my former career, I was a graphic designer. And I’m still the biggest font savant I know. So I know of what I speak.
And, seriously, single space only. This is not the fucking Dark Ages. Get over the typewriter excuse.
The “But I’m using Courier!” excuse is also ridiculous. Monospace typefaces have specific uses and applications, yes, but setting a block of text for someone to read isn’t one of them. God. Be a friend: use Garamond.
Madeline
All of us who learned to type on an actual typewriter using the double space between sentences will be dead in 20-30 years. Problem solved.
freelancer
@Blogreeder:
Yeah, that line had ’em rolling in the aisles when I headlined at the Apollo. Are you on any medication we should know about?
Omnes Omnibus
@Pam C./femlaw:As a law student, law review staffer, and law review editor, double spacing was drilled into me. I found nothing in the Blue Book, but Hodge’s Harbrace College Handbook, 12th Edition, says two spaces at the end of a sentence.
Old Dan and Little Ann
@robertdsc-PowerBook:
I second that amotion. Just kidding.
J.W. Hamner
@Ija:
I’m guessing its prevalence is mainly because it’s the default, but I’ve also seen it argued that justification can be wonky with the font size changes that are fairly common on the intertubes.
Personally I feel a little wonkiness is a small price to pay for the purity of precise right hand margins.
Blogreeder
@Redshift:
Funny. My cousin is real formal in her texting, she uses semicolons and everything. Freaks everyone out.
SueinNM
I write novels for a major publisher, and the standard is a single space between sentences. They don’t want you to have a double space.
shortstop
@Omnes Omnibus:
How did double spacing submit its own law school application?
(ducking)
bago
People still read off of paper? It’s not even backlit!
THE
When it comes to double spacing I am consistently inconsistent.
Word used to look after that, but that was years ago, I hardly ever use Word these days.
If you are using right-justify then double spacing can end up looking very weird.
PurpleGirl
@RAM: No it was with the Executive typewriter not the Selectric. The Dual-pitch Selectric let you choose 10 or 12 pitch spacing. Otherwise you had to choose which spacing you wanted. When I bought a Selectric for mathematical typing I bought the dual pitch model. Selectrics were not proportional. The Executive, on the other hand, did have proportional spacing.
hamletta
Ugh. Reminds me of my copy editor days. All those frigging extra spaces! From people so young they’d probably never used a typewriter!
What also used to bug was the old secretaries who wouldn’t set tabs in Word; they’d just tab-tab-tab till the cursor landed where they wanted it. Never understood it. On a typewriter, if your tabs aren’t set, the carriage will zip all the way to the end of the line. Lazy old biddies….
I worked at a medical journal, and table clean-up was gruesome. Tabs all over the place, with random spaces in between.
Sasha
Of course she got something right … it didn’t involve math.
Blogreeder
@freelancer:
I’m just high on life. No medication needed. Yet. (Hey, I like your reply within a blockquote within a blockquote)
Ms.B
Save the planet!
That’s how I came to terms with the MLA’s change from double-space to single-space formatting many years ago. Think of all the trees saved all over the world when all that paper sacrificed for pretty double-spacing slowed down. (Yes, that is what I thought/think.) To teach it his/her own, though.)
Of course, on the intertubes, it’s a different story.
Linnaeus
I learned to type on a manual typewriter back in the 1980s, in the very last year that our typing classroom had manual typewriters.
Here’s the deal: I’m perfectly willing to adjust my typing habits to have only a single space after the end of a sentence instead of two spaces as I have done for over 20 years. Fine. But Manjoo comes off as a real douche in his article; it’s not necessarily blatantly obvious that one “should” use a single space, not all of us are typographic experts, and some of us (like me) have never even heard that there was a “problem” until we read Manjoo. So Manjoo can make his case, and then quickly proceed to get over his own ass.
LiberalTarian
Two spaces after the period, absolutely. I read way to much in technical documents, and have to deal with way to many acronyms and abreviations. The longer space is the break between sentences.
Full justification, on the other hand, can kiss my lily white ass.
RobChicago
Do two-spacers sit in their car for five minutes with the engine running, too?
Because 30+ years ago, it was standard practice to “warm up the car” before driving it. Modern technology (fuel injection systems, I think?) makes that unnecessary.
Also, I see a lot of blogs that don’t seem to understand how to split the double space at the end of the line. A lot of times the second one ends up being the first character at the beginning of a new line. So you have a line that starts with a big empty space.
PurpleGirl
Further, I was taught mathematical typing by a lady who had an executive with replaceable keys which could be changed to take the mathematical symbols. The space bar on the Executive was split in two parts; one side spaced one unit, the other spaced two units. The various keys used different space units to make the proportional spacing work.
I think it was the robo selectric that had proportional spacing but not the regular typewriter.
hamletta
Oh, good. I was feeling a bit embarrassed that I double-spaced on my old Selectric. (God, I loved that machine.)
Omnes Omnibus
@THE: If I am using right justification and the spacing goes wonky, I will delete a space as needed to fix. Most of my writing is legal, and two spaces is the standard. When I write my novel (ha!), I can have my editor strip out the extra spaces.
Chet
No, ABL, absolutely none of your books have double-spacing between sentences. It just looks that way because they use proportional fonts.
And that’s why you shouldn’t be using double-spacing between sentences either, unless you’re writing on a typewriter. When your font automatically reduces some of the space between words in response to the differing width and visual density of different letters, it’s not necessary to have an extra space after a period – the single space will look larger all on its own.
Arclite
@Twisted_Colour:
Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
Anonymous37
Double-spacer here (when typing, won’t go so far as to put an HTML space when internet commenting, and HTML strips out my extra hit of the space bar). Since we’re talking about the reasons behind the double-space, I might as well give some personal info:
** 40 years old
** Male
** In the U.S. since I was 5 years old
** Engineer (except for the occasional documentation of procedure, I don’t write that much for my work)
** Learned to touch-type on a manual typewriter back in high school
The first and last points are why I do it. I realize that it’s unnecessary, but that extra fraction of a second helps me to make sure that my hands don’t outrun my brain so I don’t type out a string of obscenities. It works, most of the time.
One interesting thing I’ve learned as an engineer: it seems that I belong to an orphan generation of men who are more likely to be able to touchtype than not. I’ve met engineers who went to school before PCs were commonplace and when only women typed well, and younger folks seem to have decent word speeds without using proper technique, thanks to the advent of the backspace key.
Angry Black Lady
@Omnes Omnibus: same here. i was a bluebooking master before i got to law school, but law review never would have tolerated single space shenanigans.
i’m also on Team Oxford Comma and Team No Justify.
Elisabeth
@Madeline:
And then the world can pry that second space out of my cold, dead hand. But not before.
dmsilev
@suzanne:
Fixed that for you. No, no, don’t thank me.
dms
Mart
I review a lot of poorly written english langauge reports prepared by native Europeans and South Americans. They all have single space sentences. Pretty early on I gave up taking unbillable time to change all the single spaces to double, but it hurts me to send them out looking so shitty.
Turgid Jacobian
@freelancer: More like Capitals and Miniscules.
MoonBatista
@J.W. Hamner: I’m with you about justified. I’ll even staff the front line.
Tom Q
@RobChicago: No, we don’t use cars — we drive horse & buggies.
Jesus, there’s some age-ist bullshit here. Some of us were brought up/instructed in the double-space. It’s ingrained in us. We’re not going to change to suit you. What the fuck huge difference can it make to you?
adolphus
Single space. It looks better and all the places I want to publish use style manuals that require it from Chicago to MLA, APA, etc. So I would do it even if I didn’t like it.
Also, here is what I don’t understand by all you “can’t train myself to put just two spaces” not only is there global find and replace, which would take two minutes on even a long document, but most word processors I have used lately has some sort of in its Automatic Replace preference that you can set to always replace “. ” with “. ” Do it once and never think about it. If you don’t want to single space, don’t. But don’t make up excuses that include some sort of nostalgia for the rules we temporarily adopted during the dark typewriter interregnum between hand typesetters and computers.
EDIT: and I am 45, learned to touch type from my mom on a manual typewriter and learned to double-space after periods. I retaught myself to single-space when I got my first Mac. It took about a month.
Martin
Um, no. Double space after period is a throwback to fixed-width typewriter fonts. If you wish to retain your double space, you need to give up your proportional fonts and spell checker and cut and paste as well.
I’ve worked professionally typesetting documents. I can type 100+ wpm.
Do not fuck with the constants of the universe, McArdle is wrong as usual.
Edgar Allahu Akbar Poe
Never, ever occurred to me that there are people who don’t double space. Never.
scandi
I too work for a law firm, but in the graphic design department. So if I work on a brief or any legal piece, two spaces. If I’m designing a brochure or marketing piece, one space. But when I type, I find it hard to get out of the two space rule.
QDC
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Angry Black Lady:
Yale Law Journal single spaces. Is it not a Bluebook rule?
cmorenc
OK, now I want to test the double space after a period thing. This was one space. This was two. This was three.
SEE? The extra spaces disappeared. However, it was fundamental HTML, not any copy editor’s rules of style which did this. HTML was designed to be as neutral across different browsers or screen windows as possible, and does not natively recognize or respect an author’s own choices in “white space” formatting, but rigidly follows its own logical rules unless you put in lots of extra coding (which may or may not work in different browsers and window sizes as you intended).
Cornelius
Wrong, wrong, and more wrongness. It’s single-space, not double-space, not anymore.
I should know. i work in publishing, college textbook publishing (biggest publisher in the market), and we haven’t used double-spacing in…well, more than a decade (I’ve been in the business going on eight years).
As others have probably pointed out, double-spacing harks back to mono-space fonts (e.g., typewriters). It survived the transition to computers, but not for long due to variable spacing between characters, the ability to control kerning (space between fonts), etc.
In short, get with the times (i.e., the late 20th-century) and give up double-spacing for good. And that goes for anyone else who uses double-spacing. It makes you look old, out-of-touch, and unwilling to roll with change. And who wants that? Not me, that’s for sure.
That is all (for now).
Omnes Omnibus
@Martin: Lawyers double space.
RobChicago
@ Tom Q: hey, man, if I’m an ageist, I hate myself. I learned to type on a typewriter in school, and used to warm up the car in the driveway. But I stopped when I started using computers (and got a new car). Actually, it probably started from working on my college newspaper and using the typesetting machine.
Anyway, to one-spacers, two spaces look as bad as a flat note probably sounds to a musician.
Mike in NC
My current employer (GE) beats this into our heads, but I can’t for the life of me recall where the double space thing came into fashion.
I started out in the early 1980s using word processing with something called DECType (from Digital Equipment Corporation), then moved on to WordStar, WordPerfect, a few other things and then the numerous versions of MS Word (now Office 2010) after it became the standard for federal government contractors.
john b
If I’m not mistaken, there’s no difference between a single and double space in html. I’ll copy this sentence and then see if there’s a difference with two spaces.
If I’m not mistaken, there’s no difference between a single and double space in html. I’ll copy this sentence and then see if there’s a difference with two spaces.
edit:
yep. so all space away all you want on your comments. it makes no difference.
suzanne
@dmsilev:
You better check yourself before you wreck yourself…
(Yes, I have a “Ban Comic Sans” T-shirt—why do you ask?)
Ukko
I am just aghast at the people saying that they are graphic designers or typography expert what-nots-i-tists that say there is a single space after a period. Just because Word can’t kern itself out of a paper bag does not mean that there is only one kind of space.
Way back in my TeX indoctrination we were taught about how master typesetters would use longer spaces between sentences and shorter spaces between words. This is important when you set things like, “A. E. Newman for president.” You want the smaller spaces between the initials while the longer space at the end of the sentence.
Donald Knuth is who you should really be asking about this and not McMegan. (I suspect that he might say it is some function of e or based on the golder ratio.)
Jason
I just play it safe and start a new page after every sentence. Don’t even get me started with the how-many-spaces-inside-an-ellipsis controversy. WHEW. Shit gets real.
THE
Space, the final frontier.
Tom Q
@RobChicago: Well, let me cool down… Honestly, until ten minutes ago, when I read this thread, I hadn’t a clue the issue existed. That’s why I’m kind of stupefied people are so adamant about it. It’s as if you suddenly told me everyone’s writing left-handed and I’d better get in step. I was taught the hard way to put a double-space at the end of a sentence (by having points deducted when I failed to). I’ve never known any different; no one’s ever complained about anything in my style (and I both work in an office on documents and write play scripts for part of my living). To hear people go on about this makes me feel like I slept through an election.
John - A Motley Moose
@shortstop: Perhaps you should suggest they consult any of the leading American guides to grammar and punctuation. You will find that only newspaper style guides advocate for the omission of the final comma. http://www.protrainco.com/essays/serial-comma.htm
Andre
I taught myself to type on an old Commodore 16, and it’s been double spaces since day one. I even use them in text messages (and I get antsy if I don’t capitalise correctly also too.)
Motherfuckers need to stop fucking with a good thing.
Ms.B
This is the most relaxing fisticuffs I’ve seen so far on the Internet today.
Carry on!
trollhattan
@PurpleGirl:
Oooh yes, they were used by tortured-soul small publishing houses to set type. Very complicated to use but did the job. Also, too, daisy-wheel printer type wheels were avaialable in fixed and proporational type. That’s where I cut my typesetting teeth, so to speak.
Then it was on to the co$ty HP Garamond font cartridge for the LaserJet.
As a coda, I would reject an applicant who insisted on double-spacing.
suzanne
From Tom Lee’s piece:
I resemble that remark.
Time for a life, I guess.
Tom Q
@Ms.B: It is exhilirating to argue so loudly and righteously over something so meaningless.
Jason
Oxford comma debate in one two, three, …
Geeno
I always double space after periods and colons, just a habit I’ve never given a second thought to.
I also use the Oxford Comma. I was taught to write using it in first grade (1966) by a very strict teacher. She also taught us to leave a wider space between sentences than we did between words. Another habit that persists in my handwriting.
Wag
This.
tBone
@Ukko:
Nobody’s saying there’s only one kind of space. They’re saying you don’t double-space, and they’re correct. Double-spacing is deviant behavior and its filthy practitioners should be shunned by polite society.
DougJ DougJson
Manjoo is an idiot. Slate wants us to think he’s some smart guy from India when he’s really another Ivy-educated douchebag from Westchester (I’m guessing).
Dr. Drang
Conservatives double space after periods and colons. That is all.
Tom Levenson
Megan McArdle is Always Wrong ™.
Even when she’s right (2 spaces), she’s wrong.
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
(And yes, 2 spaces, always, after a colon (except on twitter, which is the devil)).
I don’t do no stinking smelling salts, me, either. Brandy, yes, in a big dose, right now.
DaddyJ
@Ija: People on the web don’t justify grafs because HTML, unlike page-layout programs, can’t hyphenate words on the fly. Depending on the width of the text block and font size, this can result in really ugly, unreadable paragraphs.
And most readability studies say that justified text is actually harder for people to read than rag-right.
Davis X. Machina
@suzanne: Extremism in the defense of good typography is no vice.
¡Viva Bringhurst!
DaddyJ
To a typographer, if you look at a graf and the first thing you notice is the gaps in it, that’s bad typography. A lot of high-end typography does make spacebands a little wider; but it’s still a single space.
By the way, the law profession is chock-a-block with hidebound ideosyncratic practices. “That’s how lawyers do it” may not be the most winning argument.
If you are using a typewriter, or working in monospaced font, or setting a document for your own aesthetic pleasure, or working in a law office, by all means use two, three, heck five spaces after a period. Just don’t expect typesetters or HTML to honor them.
JD_PhD
1. Punctuation isn’t grammar.
2. HTML does its own white-space handling (as has already been pointed out).
3. Double-spacing between sentences was invented to compensate for the horrible typesetting typewriters produced. Are you still underlining titles too? (Some of my students actually do this.)
The Dangerman
Single space is correct.
Put that knife down!
Omnes Omnibus
@DaddyJ:
That’s how lawyers do it is a slam-dunk, winning argument if you happen to be a lawyer. In addition, is the authority of Hodges’s Harbrace no longer recognized?
Ija
@DougJ DougJson:
Not bad. He graduated from Cornell. So, still Ivy League, if barely.
rj
I am an editor. Worked where the style book was double space. Now work where it is single. Gotta say, after trying both, single space wins by a mile. Try getting with 21st century. Also, as a side note, if punctuation is that much of a preoccupation (as it apparently is for McM), you are probably not writing all that well.
Violet
I feel lucky if the text I read online wraps properly and doesn’t run off into the blogroll in the margin or get covered up by blinking ads. Spacing is the least of my concerns.
bago
In visual studio it’s 4 spaces per tab, and each {} gets their own goddamned line!
Spaces between the function name and the parameter list make find sad.
wk
@Ukko: I agree. I’d always assumed that Word’s after-period spacing was vanilla single space, but I’ve been checking and notice that it does add a “little” extra space. The width of a space after a period in Word is about 1.1 times that of a regular inter-word space on the same line. In TeX, this ratio is about 1.6. So it doesn’t seem unreasonable that some people visually prefer to double-space even with proportional fonts. To each his own.
I agree with the point about Word stinking. The proper discussion is why Word is the standard even when it struggles with basic kerning.
JD_PhD
@wk: And let’s not talk about Word’s default 1.25″ margins!
KRK
You don’t really consider this a compelling argument, do you? I’m a lawyer and a single-spacer, as are all of my colleagues. Hitching your wagon to McArdle of all people just makes this post all the sadder.
Svensker
Myself, too.
Ija
@wk:
It’s the standard because it is the only thing available for most people at work. Once you’ve used it at work, you have to use in your home computer as well, because, compatibility. Microsoft Office dominates because it dominates the workplace.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
I work for a publishing company and there are two schools of thought on spacing after a period.
One school (we’ll call it the Right School) uses one space.
The other school uses two spaces. We’ll call that the Jesus Christ, How Many Times Do We Have to Tell You to Stop With the Two Spaces? This Isn’t 1980 School.
The latter irritates the hell out of editors and the layout team because it has to be corrected.
cyd
Double spaces are useful if you ever need to distinguish proper sentence ends from non-sentence ending periods, e.g. acronyms or initials. Useful for those of us who use Emacs or some other editor with sentence-manipulation commands.
Suffern ACE
I am a proud single spacer and have been since 1994 when I lived with a copy editor, who would not accept improper em and en dashes and double spaces in my papers. Since she was so gracious as to proof my work, I decided to not grate on her nerves by doing things like double spacing after periods.
You double space fiends are out of step. Let it go. Embrace the new age.
handy
@bago:
Code::blocks for the win!
(yes that was a joke)
wk
@Ija: Yeah, I know. Just wish it weren’t so. I have trouble getting colleagues to give me comments on a commentable PDF document, mainly because these folks are so used to Word’s “Track Changes” that they refuse to adapt to anything different. Oh well.
jetan
@KRK:
Another single spacing lawyer here. And, yes, one should always sit down and think things over before agreeing with McCardle.
BenTheTipsyBear
Really? 125 comments on typesetting minutiae and nobody mentions McArdle used “superlatively”?
Double spacing is a relic of a bygone age of typesetting. Tim Berners-Lee collapsed excess spaces when he invented HTML. They are gone. Time to move on.
West of the Cascades
@Omnes Omnibus: Um, I am a lawyer, and I’ve been practicing for 11 years in federal courts and I single-space. Probably about half the folks in my practice specialty (public interest environmental law) single-space.
Also, the fact that McMegan double-spaces should make that practice inherently suspect.
JGabriel
@Ija:
Ragged right is more visually appealing on a computer. It breaks up the text so a paragraph doesn’t look like a solid indigestible chunk.
.
Ija
@West of the Cascades:
Probably the truest thing said in this thread so far.
Wile E. Quixote
I learned to type on a typewriter, an Adler manual to be exact, and we weren’t taught to double space at the end of every sentence. Of course I still type as if I were typing on an Adler manual typewriter, something my co-workers have remarked upon as I sit there pounding away.
300baud
I learned two spaces on a typewriter. I converted to one when I joined the modern kerned era in 1988 or so.
Griping about this seems akin to complaining that your CD player won’t let you turn the CD over to hear the other side. Not only is the problem archaic, so is the complaint.
I’m not worried, though. The two-space people will eventually die off, leaving the rest of us in peace. Happily HTML treats any number of spaces as equivalent to one space, so you two-spacers can go crazy without bugging the rest of us.
Morbo
People who use “lay” when they mean “lie” need to lie down on some spikes.
magurakurin
I wasn’t under the impression that it was a matter of choice. I recently completed my Master’s Thesis last May in Humanities. I had to follow strict MLA guidelines down to the last space, indent, margin size and punctuation mark. I can guarantee you that if a thesis was submitted to the program I just finished with double spacing after a period the author would be ask to correct them all and resubmit. I sort of can’t believe that this is even a topic of discussion. I thought that this was totally resolved many years ago. Single space after a period in a word processing program. And, don’t justify the text unless you are actually know what the hell you are doing.
LiberalTarian
@Ija: Fuck off.
Bubblegum Tate
@hamletta:
Even better: Writers who use both single and double spaces in the same freakin’ piece! One of the writers whose work I copy edit does that, and it drives me crazy. If you’re going to be wrong and use double spaces, at least be consistently wrong!
Linnaeus
@Tom Q:
Like you, I also feel blindsided by the sudden revelation that I was supposed to change to single spacing after a sentence-ending period 10 years ago when apparently everyone else learned to do it, even though I never heard a peep, even from editors who are supposedly furious that I used it.
Three-nineteen
If you can’t tell whether this paragraph is single or double spaced, why do you care? I’ll type whichever the hell way I want and you won’t know whether I’m doing it “the correct way” or “the incorrect way”. Since I don’t work for a publisher or a lawyer, it makes absolutely no difference.
Linnaeus
@magurakurin:
I wrote an MA thesis in MS Word ten years ago. Used two spaces after each sentence, and was never instructed to correct it. At all.
Svensker
@Linnaeus:
First I’ve heard of it, too. Gee.
Ija
@LiberalTarian:
Why thank you. Why so harsh? You are not McMegan’s husband by any chance, are you?
magurakurin
@Linnaeus:
I guarantee you that if you had submitted your thesis to my program you would have been asked to resubmit. I had to correct some places in my own thesis where I had mistakenly added a space. Again, I really never thought this was a matter of choice and I am sort of surprised that people still do this.
skippy
as i have caught nothing but hell for my refusal to capitalize any word i have written in my 8 years as a political blogger (including removing all capital letters from any quotes i use), i have absolutely no authority upon which to comment.
however, i think this issue is pretty high up there on the list of things we don’t really need to worry about.
sneezy
“Every lawyer I know uses double spaces.”
Okay, so the lawyers you know don’t know how to set type. No surprise there: there’s no reason to expect that they would, what with being lawyers and not typesetters, after all.
“I just grabbed a couple books from the shelf, and each has double spaces after sentences.”
If the books you grabbed were published by major legal publishers (and so probably professionally typeset), I strongly suspect that you’re wrong about that.
Linnaeus
@magurakurin:
I don’t doubt that would have been the case. The thesis editor at my university apparently found two spaces acceptable. I did have to fix some margins and some widowed lines, but no spaces after sentences.
just visiting
@Linnaeus:
Your editors aren’t yelling at you because it’s not worth it. The graphic designers are running powerful find-and-replace searches with their industry standard page layout software – the extra spaces are gone in seconds. Much less time & effort than trying to retrain your brain and typing fingers.
ukko
@wk:
Math Geek FTW! The golden ratio is 1.61803399, when you hit that number you know you are right :-)
Everybody that is complaining about having to fix the incorrect spacing in copy, what is with that. Back in 1978 TeX was doing beautiful typesetting and had figured out that whitespace separates words one space or 20, it is the typesetters job to make it the correct size. I mean the system does not trust the author’s line breaks, does it? Why should word spacing be any more sacrosanct?
I always figured that Word did it so that when you put grandma in front of it should could type out her recipe cards the way she used to. Sure, they look like shit, but but you don’t have to explain the difference between content and presentation.
just visiting
Until tonight, I had no idea that the legal profession existed in its own typographic time warp. But since some of them are still running around in powdered wigs, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that they’re a little resistant to change.
magurakurin
@Linnaeus:
I bet you are as glad as I am to be finished with that. Widowed lines, they sucked. Hearing your story, though, I’m a little peeved. I mean, they make us conform to those strict standards, yet the standards are not uniform across all programs. I enjoyed the research and the writing of my thesis, but the final two months I spent screwing with the stupid formatting was just a waste of stress energy.
cossacksare
I single-space because everything I read is single-spaced.
By the way, this isn’t a grammar issue, so your World O’ Grammar has clearly annexed some alien territory.
BGinCHI
OK, listen up.
1. If you’re talking about writing with left and right justified margins, the space after a period doesn’t really show up as significant, because of the way words get spaced to fill a line.
2. And if anyone is bothered by double spacing after periods, they can do a find-and-replace. You put in two spaces in the find and one space in the replace and voila, it’s done. So any editor who complains about this is a fucking idiot.
Everyone here arguing that two spaces is better for left-only justified prose is correct. It’s a separator. Even McArdle can’t fuck that up.
Linnaeus
@just visiting:
I figured as much, since, now that I think about it, I’ve published multiple pieces and have never been told that my two-spaces-after-a-sentence was wrong. I guess I’m just taken aback by the vehemence with which it’s being asserted that it’s obvious that one should single space.
wasabi gasp
It’s only reasonable to assume the people on the bus want the extra space too.
Sentient Puddle
Well, my job is technical writing, so I don’t get a say on one space or two because if I go against the style guide, my boss will lay in to me and tell me to get rid of all those damn spaces. So I do have to care more than most of the rest of you (feel lucky).
But what strikes me most about this is how so many of you don’t realize that a principled stand for double-spacing doesn’t matter at all. HTML strips out extra spaces unless you specify an extra non-breaking space, word processors more or less deal with the spaces (or they should), any competent editor will do a search and replace to remove any of those spaces…yeah, it just doesn’t matter. But feel free to rawr, I guess.
Oh, and I grew up knowing double-spacing, but made an effort to change to single-spacing somewhere in college when I learned what the style guides said (and knowing that I’d have to change). Took me no more than a week of conscious typing before I dropped the double-spacing habit. Not that hard if you put a little effort into it.
Linnaeus
@magurakurin:
Yeah, the formatting issues were a pain. Leaving aside the issue of proper spacing after sentences, the standards were pretty strict and I did have to spend a fair amount of time both during the writing and after my defense making sure things were right.
Uncle Clarence Thomas
.
.
A single space after the period when using proportional fonts is correct, proper, better looking, less distracting, and more efficient. It is – and should be – the rule, not the exception.
.
.
RossInDetroit
I’ve been a double spacer all my life. If I live to be 100 I may write as many words in English as I wrote in COBOL in my 30s.
But yesterday I had to do 1100 words for a magazine article. I checked their standards and sure enough, they specify single spacing so I composed it that way. It was HARD. my thumb just wanted to hit that bar twice after a full stop.
Shinobi
I agree. (There are two spaces after that period and if you don’t like it tough rocks.)
Ms.B
@skippy:
That’s because the world is not as “mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful” as it should be. (e.e cummings)
I agree.
janeform
I’m late to the thread (I was making food for my dog, thank you very much), but how about impact as a verb, or the even more heinous impactful? Awful!
frosty
I learned to double space after periods on a manual typewriter while taking typing in summer school in high school. Perhaps the most useful class I ever took. And let me mention that taking it in a class where the attendance was 80% girls was not a hardship, either.
I still double space. I have on occasion, for a client with a specific style guide, done a search and replace on a 100 page document for “.. Not what I would call Good Times.
hamletta
@just visiting:
True. But they are putting curses on your children, and your children’s children….
just visiting
@Linnaeus:
Never mess with the typophiles.
RossInDetroit
Most of my writing is for my own use or casual correspondence. I double space because it’s easier for me to read. I don’t think I should type in a way that’s harder for me to read just because everyone else suddenly started doing it 15 years ago (if they actually did).
When Farhad’s screed came out I mocked it on Facebook. Practically my whole family and several friends had already read it and agreed.
I’m so happy for him that he has time in his busy schedule to be a typography scold.
Linkmeister
@SueinNM: You don’t have a husband named Serge, do you?
DaddyJ
The sharp-eyed among you have probably noticed that all of the double-space advocates here seem to be contradicting themselves in their very comments, which remain resolutely single-spaced. Whereas ABL and McArdle are proudly flying their double-wide phreak flag in their posts. How can this be?
The sad fact is that mere commenters are stuck with what HTML and the parsimonious comment box gives us. Whereas registered blog contributors are enabled in their double-spacing habit by a indulgent, nanny-state WordPress. No doubt they could, if they wanted, change the font to Blippo, or commit other such atrocities. Let us pray they just stick to double-spacing.
Ija
This is a test. This is a double space.
This is a test. This is a single space.
Edit: Apparently it’s true you can’t do double space in comments.
RossInDetroit
I’m genuinely surprised that a tech writer decided to lecture his readers about the insignificant issue of how much nothing should come after a dot.
If that’s all he’s got for column material it’s time to get out of the house more.
tBone
@BGinCHI:
Spoken like someone who’s never had to clean up a mangled abortion of a document pounded out by some asshole who thinks he’s still in sixth-grade typing class. I bet you like double quotes too, don’t you? Admit it!
adolphus
Here is one I just learned the other day. When writing ellipses you are supposed to put spaces between the periods. So “. . . ” not “…”
Learn something new everyday.
Porco Rosso
WWJTD – What would Jan Tschichold do?
jTh
So let me get this straight. A whole generation of people were taught to double space (and taught that it looks better, and intuitively see that a double space after a sentence clarifies a sentence against other in-sentence uses of a period), and then a fraction of that generation were taught differently by their professions, and now those people are suddenly going to be pricks because the rest of us didn’t get the memo?
You’ll find and replace my double spaces from my cold dead fingers.
redactor
And just to be clear, fonts like Courier are monospace, not monotype. Monotype is the name of a corporation that designs and sells fonts. It’s also a type of printmaking.
Peter
I had never even heard of double-space typing until just now.
hamletta
@Peter: God bless your sweet, young heart!
Daniel
@Omnes Omnibus: Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma? Heh… sorry, had to be done.
Also, BTW (not specifically to you Omnes) I make a living in Advertising Design and setting text and making it pretty has been part of my job for 15 years and double spacing is wrong. It just is. If I were to add up all the time I’ve spent doing a Find/Replace for double spaces I’m sure it would upset me, however, every time I do it I am convinced of the single space superiority.
One other thing…. We single spacers look down on you double spacers. Sorry about that.
Ija
So, how do you guys feel about the indiscriminate use of semi colon? I was taught that it’s pretentious, you can always use multiple sentences instead.
tBone
@Ija:
Fixed.
Ija
@tBone:
Hah! Okay, that should have been a period and a different sentence. But not a semicolon. I’m allergic to it.
Catsy
@Ija: I’m not sure what’s pretentious about a semicolon. To me a long string of short, simple sentences feels disjointed and jarring, or like I’m reading a children’s book. The pause between clauses imparted by a period feels too absolute; I use semicolons to link them together when there’s a semantic relationship.
Also: single-spacer here. It drives me nuts when people compose emails or documents with an excess of pointless whitespace. Some of this comes from growing up during the BBS era, when I could type faster than my modem could transmit and bytes mattered. Double-spacing between sentences could bloat the size of a large fanfic or walkthrough by quite a few kilobytes; at 1200 baud this was a nontrivial increase in download time. Thankfully there were very, very few double-spacers playing MUSHes and other text-based games.
Oxford comma: I use it whenever its absence could make the meaning of “X and Y” ambiguous.
@adolphus:
Ugh. That’s another one that drives me absolutely bugfuck, and not just for my aforementioned distaste for excess whitespace. Folks, there’s a reason why word processors automatically interpret “…” as an ellipse and not “. . .”. Spacing them looks like crap, doesn’t get interpreted properly by word processors, and completely borks line wrapping.
de stijl
How can McArdle call herself a technologist? She can’t even use a calculator.
magurakurin
@jTh:
I don’t think it’s a question of not getting the memo. I learned to type on a manual typewriter as well in high school. But the very first time I used a word processor, on a Mac, the manual said on page one don’t double space after a period because the machine will make the proper spacing and double spacing will make the space too large. That was 25 years ago and I was late to the word processing party by that time. I suppose if people want to go on double spacing that is fine, but it isn’t the same amount of space as when we used to type on the old typewriters, it’s more. And the documents you produce will look different from more or less every single book, magazine, newspaper and document produced by the overwhelming majority of people and industries.
I don’t understand why people would insist on this. It isn’t a question of saying the old spacing on the typewriters was better, because the word processor is creating the same look for us. Double spacing is creating a different look. One may wish to insist it is better, but I don’t understand why.
Steeplejack
@Lysana:
The single space predates computer fonts. Trust me as a geezer who also predates computer fonts and slung a little hot lead on an actual Linotype machine back in the day.
Single space is for typesetting (and “proportional” fonts on modern computers), double space is (was) for typewriting (monospace fonts).
Catsy
@Redshift:
I have had people in online games ask if I’m a girl when they see me capitalize and use punctuation in chat.
I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean.
Angry Black Lady
@QDC: Va. L. Rev. is double-spaced, y’all.
Angry Black Lady
DOUBLE SPACE OR DIE!
Angry Black Lady
(or something less crazed.)
mclaren
Single-space proponents are usually the lowest form of human being: programmers.
Nash
Someone mentioned single spacing being more economical. I’ll tell you why… it’s so us graphic designers don’t have to spend hours upon hours deleting all your lovely extra spaces. What a chore. One space, please.
Ecks
@Angry Black Lady: Two out of three ain’t bad.
I wonder how many gigabytes of hard drive space across the world is uselessly clogged with remembering totally redundant spaces in long defunct documents. It’s a tragedy really, think of the poor silicone (no, not that kind of silicone, the poor kind. On hard drives).
Paula
Coming out of lurker exile to say:
HERE’S TO SINGLE SPACING. (Modern kerning!!!)
AND THE OXFORD COMMA. (But without Vampire Weekend.)
Also, “irregardless” is not a word. (But “conversate” is acceptable slang, IMHO.)
adolphus
@Catsy:
While I may agree with you, you need to understand you are arguing with my Chicago Manual of Style which is the style guide that dominates my profession (History) so I am afraid you lose. Don’t take it personally, I prefer your way, but the professors grading, publishers publishing, and dissertation offices judging all want Chicago. Sorry. I have masters to please whether it please thee or me or not.
Neddie Jingo
Former book-production editor here… Screwing around with extra spacing between period and following text will produce “rivers” of blank space in justified text that lead your eye away from the line you’re reading toward some line you’re not reading. This is a disservice to your reader. “Grayness” of text (i.e., evenness of spacing, lack of these “rivers”) is considered a virtue by ink-stained wretches such as my former self.
I give not a rolling doughnut what any benighted style manual says; if you’re typing in a proportionally spaced face, you’re setting type, not typing. Learn the goddamned rules or punt.
I am possibly the last person on earth whose teeth are set on edge by the egregious use of the word font when typeface is meant. Those Apple people have a lot to answer for in Gutenberg’s Heaven.
Oh, and this grandly named “Oxford comma” (more commonly called the “serial comma” by people to whom it actually matters)? Slam it up your snout!
niknik
Oh, ABL. I used to love you, now I dunno what to think anymore!
alwhite
“Megan McArdle Gets Something Right”
Blind sow, please say hello to acorn.
Since grammar and spelling are such a huge source of energy on the Internet I thought this thread might generate more heat. I guess it must only be important for humiliating other posters ;).
But dnt mttr soon enuf all thout in 140 ch or < no gmmr neway
jetan
@Steeplejack:
This is true. My Dad taught me da rule back when he used to bring me hot type and photo plates back from his newspaper office.
magurakurin
@Angry Black Lady:
I’m not a lawyer, but it doesn’t seem to be the case that the Virginia Law Review requires a double space.
http://www.virginialawreview.org/page.php?s=submissions&p=stylebook
The guidelines say to use the Bluebook unless there is a rule specifically stated in the Slatebook. Looking over the Slatebook guidelines I find nothing requiring two spaces after a period.
The Bluebook, however, requires
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/spacing.asp
I think the two-spacers only have a leg to stand on because the convention is so strong that their two spaces are just changed automatically when their work is published. That certainly is the case with HTML as we have seen in this thread.
Seriously, get over it. It’s a waste of energy anyway. It’s easier to type one space instead of two.
lllphd
HOORAY FOR DOUBLE SPACES!!
i’ve become quite self-conscious since this issue emerged and the punctuataratti insisted they are oh so gauche.
thankyouthankyouthankyou.
(and yeah, it kinda does stick in the craw that the mcgargle agrees, don’t it?)
RSA
First, I use two spaces at the end of a sentence, for efficiency.
Efficiency? I edit what I write. (This is because I’m usually writing for publication.) My text editor (Emacs) has a built-in command to move the cursor to the end of a sentence, and two spaces indicates that position with relatively little ambiguity. (I could write a command that would find the end of a sentence with one space, but there are more exceptions to handle, e.g., “Mr. D. Jones and Mr. J. Smith…”) I can move through my document sentence by sentence if I like, without having to touch the mouse. Old style, I know, but it works for me.
Second, most of the complaints I read about sentences with two spaces are about the readability of text on computer screens. That’s a computer typography issue. Notice that I’ve used the word “computer”, twice? Complaints should be aimed at the software that renders the text, not the people who typed it.
brantl
Proportional spacing eliminated the need for double-spacing. Period.
Amy Robertson
So glad to learn you’re a 2-spacer, ABL. Reaffirms my faith in what’s right and just in the world. I’ll stick with 2 because
1. It’s how I learned (30-something years ago on a manual typewriter) and this old dog does not easily learn new tricks,
but more important
2. It’s easier to read. Anything that makes my writing easier to read makes it at least microscopically more likely that the judge and the clerks will understand and assimilate my argument.
So like serif font and left justification — other features that are easier to read than their opposites — I’ll just keep on 2-spacing. And obsessively adding extra spaces to block quotes from Westlaw. Damn you, Thomson Reuters!
iLarynx
My first post on the new site gets robo-marked as “spam” with no option to edit. Lovely start.
YAFB
Unless you’re having your work typeset for publication, do what the heck you want.
I’ve worked for about 50-100 publishers as a copy-editor over the past 20-odd years, first obviously on hard copy, nowadays 99.99% of the time onscreen. Double-space your terminal sentence punctuation etc. in your submission if you like, but one of the first things I’ll have to do is a global find and replace to make it single. I’ve never worked for a publisher that specified anything else.
A lot of these conventions that have developed also have money- and time-saving ramifications.
If you’re a stickler for it, can you guarantee that you’ve 100% consistently double-spaced? If not, then there’ll be a grueling task for someone to make that consistent. Try doing that with find and replace. OTOH, it’s a mindlessly trivial task to make double spaces single.
As for the “Oxford comma”/comma in serial lists controversy, Oxford University Press themselves say it developed because it saved copy-editors time having to figure out where there should be such a comma and where not. I don’t like it myself, preferring to reserve it for where it makes the sense clearer, but there are a gazillion things I’ve had to do to text over the years that I don’t like because that’s what the publisher wants, so I’m a bit punchy about it all by now.
shortstop
@John – A Motley Moose: Many of my clients use AP style, and none of them is a “newspaper,” as you quaintly put it. AP rules are commonly used as a starting point for in-house corporate/organizational style guides, though many use Chicago, of course.
YAFB
@adolphus:
Just to address this one, too – if you’re talking about typesetting, that convention will vary from publisher to publisher (like the “Oxford comma,” I’ve had to do both). In fact, if you delve into Word’s symbols feature, you’ll find there’s an ellipsis character – … – and that’s what a lot of publishers prefer you to use. You’ll notice it resembles three unspaced points. In publications, it’s helpful because the points and spaces won’t split nonsensically across line breaks.
kerFuFFler
I don’t give a qwerty about such typographical issues, but share your disgust with the misuse of ‘myself’.
Another pet peeve of mine (I cherish these since I am unfortunately allergic to furry pets) is the incorrect use of “there’s” when followed by a plural subject.
“There’s many reasons…”
Come on people, there are many reasons! “There’s” is a contraction of “there” and “is” and we would not say “There is many reasons.”
Michael
Nit: HTML does not remove/delete/purge extra spaces. It only collapses multiple instances of whitespace. For all those trying sentences with multiple counts of spaces to see how they look, copy outputted text from the browser into a non-HTML context (Word, Notepad, etc), and see how the extra spaces you inserted are still there.
Tuttle
Every lawyer I know uses double spaces.
Well, you’ve convinced me. Single-space it is!
mrmobi
@suzanne
Well said.
The bible in my profession is “A Manual of Style” from the University of Chicago Press. There simply is no clearer guide to the proper use of punctuation, or, for that matter, any number of other style issues which arise when making books.
I’m old enough to have learned to type on a manual typewriter (an IBM Selectric), but I’m also part of a long tradition of bookmaking, typography and graphic design, and there is simply no reason to use two spaces at the end of sentences. It doesn’t improve readability, eats up more space, and forces folks like me to have to take an extra step to turn copy into elegant, readable text. Worst of all, some folks actually believe that if two spaces are good, three must be better. I’m not kidding.
Megan McArdle remains consistently and completely wrong.
PurpleGirl
@mrmobi: …manual typewriter (an IBM Selectric),…
An IBM Selectric was NOT a manual typewriter. It was an ELECTRIC typewriter. No electricity, the machine didn’t work. A manual typewriter did not use electric power.
Sentient Puddle
@Michael:
I just tried this. They aren’t. Not when copying from Firefox, Chrome, or IE.
adolphus
@YAFB:
Two points: I just compared the three ways if doing ellipses: no space, one space ,and Word symbol and the Word symbol looks like the exact middle between no space and one space between periods in an ellipse to me. That’s across typefaces. I prefer no space, Chicago wants space, I think I will start using this symbol and see what my dissertation office says. Thanks.
lovable liberal
Yeah, and emacs is the One True Way, all you vi suckahs!
I say this as an apparently “wrong, wrong, wrong [because I’m in the printing industry and I say so]” two-spacer. Shit, I even put two spaces after a colon if it introduces an independent clause. So sue me for finding that two spaces help me locate the goddamn tiny period at the end of the sentence.
Will someone who gives a fuck, … please contact me privately. I’m missing mine.
Sloegin
I’m a Dapper-Dan double-space man. The rest of all ya’alls are a bunch of computer plinking hipsters.
twiffer
this is something people are aruging about, outside of academic circles and font geek forums? why?
i find double spacing adds clarity, particularly as puncuation can be easy to gloss over. then again, i consistently ignore proper capitalization (except when i don’t), so it certainly helps mark sentence breaks. style guides, as far as i’m concerned, apply to professional and/or formal writing. informal writing is, shockingly, informal and trends more towards the conversational.
YAFB
@adolphus:
Well, beware that in my experience (almost all my work nowadays is academic textbooks and republished theses and dissertations) universities have their own standards which don’t always tie in with Chicago style and are sometimes jealously guarded (in the UK we use a Cambridge University Press standard text called Copy-editing by Judith Butcher, which is broadly comparable to the Chicago style guide but differs in a number of respects).
If you do use that symbol, if they want something different, it’d be an easy job to find and replace with whatever they want, but you might want to check beforehand with them what they prefer, to cut out fiddling around after the event.
The key with most of these issues is to aim for consistency. Many publishers nowadays will wear most style deviations if the author’s done things consistently as it’s not worth the time and money messing around to comply with a relatively arbitrary standard. Also, if you’ve been consistent, it’s usually easier to change things with find and replace if need be.
Catsy
@Sloegin:
Says the person plinking on the computer.
And that’s really the thing that annoys me about the people advocating fealty to this style guide or that tradition, all of which are firmly rooted in practices that made sense with the limitations of technology half a century ago but which are vestigial and extraneous when you’re using a computer.
If your job requires you to do things a certain way, that’s one thing. You’ve got a job to do, it pays your bills. I get that. It’s not your fault your employer or profession is stuck in the last century.
But if you’re just doing it out of a stubborn determination to do things the way they’ve always been done, that’s another thing. With very rare exceptions, we just don’t use typewriters anymore. They’re obsolete, a relic of the pre-digital era, and so are the typographical rules that center around their limitations.
Catsy
@twiffer:
Well yeah, if you’re going to get your e.e. cummings freak on, you can expect your sentences to be hard to read without proper capitalization to separate them.
I went through that phase too, once.
Surly Duff
@freelancer:
This.
Also, I love her response in the comments when someone points out that her blog entry is single spaced. She proudly proclaims that the HTML strips her extra spaces out. “Fuck that HTML, I am going to use two spaces anyway. In your face!”
Instead of recognizing that she is needlessly and pointlessly adding spaces that will ultimately be deleted, she is proud that she continues an archaic and pointless exercise. I swear she has got to be one of the dumbest “respected” bloggers out there on the intertubes.
Tablesaw
Death Panel Truck
And here I thought double-spacing had gone the way of the Underwood typewriter. I didn’t like doing it when I was in high school because I thought it looked silly and unnecessary. That’s probably why I got a D+ in typing class.
Angry Black Lady
@magurakurin: perhaps it is a result of whatever the printer people did after we all finished cite checking the articles, but my October 1999 copy of the Virginia Law Review very clearly has two spaces between sentences (or appears to). ::shrug::
@Surly Duff: you’re an asshat. my double spaces are not deleted. i may be dumb, but you suffer from lack of reading comprehension skills. every firm job i have had since i started practicing in 2000 uses double spaces. during my paralegal bluebooking days (96-98) we used double spaces. i type 90 words a minute and have been doing so since the 90s. typing to me is reflexive. why would i change to one space when most of my typing is required to have two spaces and the html strips out the two spaces for me? so, evidently, it is not archaic and pointless to me (since lawyers are very detail-oriented it would actually be detrimental for me to insist on using single spaces while my colleagues use double spaces. that’s the sort of shit that shows up on one’s yearly review.) so, it seems, that you are dumber than i purportedly am.
Angry Black Lady
i can guarantee that i’m 100% consistently double-spaced. and if i miss one, i can guarantee that a junior associate or paralegal will catch it during the cite checking process.
asiangrrlMN
Double-spacer here. I acknowledge that it is going away and all that, but I don’t give a shit. I will type it until–wait, what’s that? Publishers don’t like it? Then I will change it. But, I prefer it. I also like a double space after a colon. I have begrudgingly included the Oxford comma, though I prefer without, and I hate justified margins.
Kids, lawn, off.
asiangrrlMN
P.S. I said the same thing when I saw that MM2 article. I thought it was end times because I agreed with her.
YAFB
@Angry Black Lady:
The ancillary point I intended to make (but this dratted dayjob distracted me momentarily) was: “Can you [generic; read: “one”] guarantee that all the double spaces in whatever you’re writing are intentional, once you’ve revised, inserted etc.?”
Which is where the money- and time-saving comes in (aside from the issues of typesetting elegance others have pointed out above). If you do a global replace leaving only single spaces, job done, and you can devote time and energy (and money as far as your employers concerned) to checking more demanding issues that require some human input and may have wider ramifications than personal preference.
I’d also point out that us poor slobs who have to slave at the wordface all day doing what others have decided is a good idea where punctuation etc. are concerned with other people’s screeds have usually had personal preferences beaten out of us before we’ve held down the job for long. It can be surprisingly stressful given a problem author or text, and you eventually run out of tooth surface to grit.
YAFB
@Angry Black Lady:
Also (a brief power cut having intervened, now typing by candle light just in case):
I think asshat was talking about McArdle, not you, ABL.
DanR2
I wonder how all the militant double spacers are managing to read these comments (and everything else on the internet) with all the carefully tapped extra spaces stripped out of the html.
(Probably because, in a variable spaced font, that space after the period is a little wider than the space between words. Oh yeah, and because the period itself denotes the end of the sentence and helps creates that easily recognizable little break in the line.)
Janus Daniels
Put a space between words. Put a period and a space after a sentence. Put a line break before a paragraph, or indent the first sentence.
It looks good and legible, it makes sense, and after that you can improvise.
Pat
When I hear “myself” used improperly, I cringe like when the proverbial fingernails are scratching the proverbial blackboard. Also when people – especially professionals like sports commenters – say things like “Me and him go way back.” Ack.
Kenneth Fair
“I know that many people were taught to put two spaces between sentences. I was too. But these days, using two spaces is an obsolete habit. The practice was passed down from the typewriter era. Typewriter fonts had unusual proportions. Using two spaces helped set off sentences a bit better. We don’t use typewriters anymore. So it’s not standard. It’s not part of typographic practice. Once in a while, you can use two spaces after sentences. When? If you’re forced to used a typewriter-style font. These are also known as monospaced fonts.”
Matthew Butterick, Typography for Lawyers (1st ed.), p. 41.
“Put only one space after punctuation. The typewriter convention of two spaces is for monospaced type only.”
United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Requirements and Suggestions for Typography in Briefs and Other Papers, p. 5.
Batocchio
Even McArdle can be right sometimes when she disagrees with a ridiculous, contrarian Slate post. That one is more obnoxious than most, and Manjoo is a sanctimonious prick. The old rule I was taught was two spaces after a period, unless it’s a newspaper column, where space is precious. I think two spaces is easier to read – and it’s the printing standard in textbooks I handle all the time, so Manjoo can blow it out his ass. However, using one space or two is mostly a style choice. The same is true of quite a few grammar “disputes,” although the folks who priggishly assert unfounded authority to condemn style choices would have you believe otherwise. I’m all for clarity and good writing, but let’s be honest, some grammar prescriptionists are just dicks, and wrong to boot.
Surly Duff
@Angry Black Lady:
Chill the fuck out. I was talking about McCardle. See the post I linked to? Freelancer’s comments regarding McCardle? Maybe I should have been more specific by naming McCardle, but, holy shit, chill out. Maybe you should take a little break and a few deep breaths.
But whatever. You are a lawyer, and I am just some simpleton that isn’t so detailed oriented. My bad, next time I’ll be more explicit and detail-oriented so you won’t have to click one button to see what I was referring to. Ironic how you invoke “reading comprehension” as my problem.
mnpundit
This man is insane. It is MUCH easier to read with only 1 space. I always feel like I am stuttering, like I am ready to begin a new sentence but find only blankness. Then I have to restart immediately after. Basically it makes reading a very unsatisfying experience.