Friday, January 14, 2011

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“[I]f your teachers force you to use two spaces, send them a link to this article. Use this as your subject line: ‘If you type two spaces after a period, you’re doing it wrong.’”

comments: 6

Daughter Number Three said...

Down with extra spaces. I've been deleting them since 1983 when I became a typesetter.

Elaine said...

Oh, dear. I took typing when I was 15...let's see (add, add,) in 1962. The electric typewriter was all the rage. I can no more just leave one space than...gee, I am not sure what irreversible habit I can compare it to, but almost 50 years of typing means it's pretty ingrained. I'll just be wrong (thumbs nose.)

Michael Leddy said...

DN3, I noticed you noticing crummy leading in a headline not too long ago.

Elaine, how do you get the extra spaces after periods in your posts? I thought HTML removes them. Are you adding non-breaking spaces?

A clever touch on the iPad: typing two spaces yields a period and a space.

Elaine said...

I wouldn't know how to enter a non-breaking space if my life depended on it. The spaces are likely there because I am using an out-dated e-mail set-up. I like Outlook Express, which my husband set up for me when I complained about g-mail's clunky features. He has told me that sooner or later I'll have to switch. (When that happens, I plan to whine.)

Mel said...

I took typing at secondary school in the early 70's so I am a two space person. I sent your link to my daughter who is studying computer science and she reported that she is a two spacer as well. A quick survey of her friends came back at close to 50%. Perhaps Canada isn't as firm on one space.
Cheers!

Koralatov said...

I find myself still using the double-space even after years of trying to break the habit. I picked up this unfortunate habit when I took Office and Information Studies back in high school in the (very) late ’90s. Even though it was totally computerised, we were still taught to use 10pt Courier exclusively and put two spaces after the full stop.

That said, there may be some hope for me: I typeset a book recently, and the first thing I did was a search and replace on each constituent essay to replace double spaces with single ones. Even with that in mind, I still can’t break the muscle-memory in my own typing.