Dr. Shades: One or Two Spaces After a Period?

[Gladness]

August 28, 2017

Dear Dr. Shades,

I hope this post finds you well.

I am writing because on another thread, you requested the following style on MDB:

[MODERATOR NOTE: To make your posts more readable, please don't hit the {Enter} key after each period. Please just hit the space bar twice instead.

(emphasis added)

This lead me to a question which is the topic of the current post and to which I hope you can reply. The inquiry is this: are we permitted to only put a single space after periods like I just did? I ask this because when I was in middle school and learned how to type on a manual typewriter, I was taught to put two spaces after a period. However, I recently learned that current style guides uniformly and emphatically state that periods should be followed by a single space.

For example, see the following article from Slate: Space Invaders: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.

Or the editors at the Chicago Manual of Style:

CMOS follows the industry standard of one space after a period.

Or Business Insider: Why you should never add two spaces after a period.

Or Cult of Pedagogy: Nothing Says Over 40 Like Two Spaces after a Period! [ouch!]

On the other hand, the MLA says:

Leave one space after a period or other concluding punctuation mark, unless your instructor prefers two spaces.

So, if you insist on being pedantic and archaic, we'll try to comply.

I look forward to your reply.

Sincerely,

Analytics

A:a

[_Jersey Girl]

Analytics, you wrote:

This lead me to a question which is the topic of the current post and to which I hope you can reply. The inquiry is this: are we permitted to only put a single space after periods like I just did? I ask this because when I was in middle school and learned how to type on a manual typewriter, I was taught to put two spaces after a period. However, I recently learned that current style guides uniformly and emphatically state that periods should be followed by a single period.

In your last sentence, I think you meant to say "that periods should be followed by a single space" not a "single period".

I, too, learned how to type on a manual typewriter. I don't know what you do, but I tend to use the computer keyboard like it's a typewriter and do so automatically as a matter of habit. I'm sure you do as well. I was taught to put ONE space between sentences as you were.

I think what Shades is getting at is how to space when you're dividing the post into para's. For example if I type this para contrary to what Shades is asking me to do and only space once in between it looks
jammed up like this.

If I type this according to his wishes and how I was taught, I'm spacing twice in between so it

Looks like this instead of the jammed up mess that Shades is critical of.

In other words, he's talking about the paragraph breaks, not the sentences.

I realize that there are posters here who never learned to type and I confess I have no experience in what might be called a "keyboarding" class if one even exists, so what you have here are people who type at various skill levels and some with little skill at all. We've probably got people who type fast like me and plenty of folks who are doing good just to whip out a few sentences using what we used to call the "hunt and peck" method.

Then again, we've got people who are very likely mentally ill whose form is great and yet, their content is typically psycho. So there's that, too.

;-)

[_Analytics]

Analytics, you wrote:

This lead me to a question which is the topic of the current post and to which I hope you can reply. The inquiry is this: are we permitted to only put a single space after periods like I just did? I ask this because when I was in middle school and learned how to type on a manual typewriter, I was taught to put two spaces after a period. However, I recently learned that current style guides uniformly and emphatically state that periods should be followed by a single period.

In your last sentence, I think you meant to say "that periods should be followed by a single space" not a "single period".

I, too, learned how to type on a manual typewriter. I don't know what you do, but I tend to use the computer keyboard like it's a typewriter and do so automatically as a matter of habit. I'm sure you do as well. I was taught to put ONE space between sentences as you were.

I think what Shades is getting at is how to space when you're dividing the post into para's. For example if I type this para contrary to what Shades is asking me to do and only space once in between it looks
jammed up like this.

If I type this according to his wishes and how I was taught, I'm spacing twice in between so it

Looks like this instead of the jammed up mess that Shades is critical of.

In other words, he's talking about the paragraph breaks, not the sentences.

I realize that there are posters here who never learned to type and I confess I have no experience in what might be called a "keyboarding" class if one even exists, so what you have here are people who type at various skill levels and some with little skill at all. We've probably got people who type fast like me and plenty of folks who are doing good just to whip out a few sentences using what we used to call the "hunt and peck" method.

Then again, we've got people who are very likely mentally ill whose form is great and yet, their content is typically psycho. So there's that, too.

;-)

Thanks for the correction--fixed.

Yea, I'm totally on board with using paragraphs and separating them with an empty line--that is important here for legibility. I just thought it was kind of funny that he threw in using two spaces after the period as part of the rule. I always did two spaces until very recently, when an email correspondent corrected me and told me that was both wrong and distracting. I was going to defend the practice until I researched it and found out I was in fact wrong.

Personally, I find the number of spaces after a period barely noticeable and don't really care one way or the other. But given how pedantic Shades is about such things, I decided to start a thread on the topic. For the record, the formal tone of the OP was in jest.

[_Jersey Girl]

Thanks for the correction--fixed.

Yea, I'm totally on board with using paragraphs and separating them with an empty line--that is important here for legibility. I just thought it was kind of funny that he threw in using two spaces after the period as part of the rule. I always did two spaces until very recently, when an email correspondent corrected me and told me that was both wrong and distracting. I was going to defend the practice until I researched it and found out I was in fact wrong.

Personally, I find the number of spaces after a period barely noticeable and don't really care one way or the other. But given how pedantic Shades is about such things, I decided to start a thread on the topic. For the record, the formal tone of the OP was in jest.

Conventional typing requires one space after a period. That's how I learned to type. I'm sure what Shades is talking about is the period at the end of the sentence that ends the sentence itself and the paragraph break that follows.

I hope so, because my brain was programmed to type like this a very long time ago and there's no undoing it!

[_Analytics]

Thanks for the correction--fixed.

Yea, I'm totally on board with using paragraphs and separating them with an empty line--that is important here for legibility. I just thought it was kind of funny that he threw in using two spaces after the period as part of the rule. I always did two spaces until very recently, when an email correspondent corrected me and told me that was both wrong and distracting. I was going to defend the practice until I researched it and found out I was in fact wrong.

Personally, I find the number of spaces after a period barely noticeable and don't really care one way or the other. But given how pedantic Shades is about such things, I decided to start a thread on the topic. For the record, the formal tone of the OP was in jest.

Conventional typing requires one space after a period. That's how I learned to type. I'm sure what Shades is talking about is the period at the end of the sentence that ends the sentence itself and the paragraph break that follows.

I hope so, because my brain was programmed to type like this a very long time ago and there's no undoing it!

I totally agree with you--one space after a period is correct grammar and correct typesetting. However, for several decades in the 20th century when many of us learned to type on typewriters, many of us were told to put two spaces after a period. That is now considered plainly wrong, but that is what many of us were taught then. That is what I was taught, and I think that is what Shades was taught, too. The reasoning for two spaces had to do with the monospace fonts that typewriters use--on a typewriter, then letter "i" takes up as much width as the letter "m". That is because of the mechanics of a typewriter. This artifact of typewriters led to documents that naturally had a lot of space in them. In order to emphasize the space at the end of a sentence, it became somewhat standard to put two spaces after a period. But that rule was only intended for monospace fonts, and is now distinctly antiquated.

[_Jersey Girl]

Analytics now you've got me doubting myself. I wonder if I, too, was taught to double space between sentences and somehow dropped the practice. Never mind, it's too big a challenge to what's left of my brain and I can't afford that kind of pressure!

[_Analytics]

Analytics now you've got me doubting myself. I wonder if I, too, was taught to double space between sentences and somehow dropped the practice. Never mind, it's too big a challenge to what's left of my brain and I can't afford that kind of pressure!

When I was told to only put a single space after a period, I complained that doing so was too inefficient to be taken seriously--why hit {space}{space}{backspace} when you could simply type in {space}{space} with 33% fewer strokes?

[_Jersey Girl]

Analytics now you've got me doubting myself. I wonder if I, too, was taught to double space between sentences and somehow dropped the practice. Never mind, it's too big a challenge to what's left of my brain and I can't afford that kind of pressure!

When I was told to only put a single space after a period, I complained that doing so was too inefficient to be taken seriously--why hit {space}{space}{backspace} when you could simply type in {space}{space} with 33% fewer strokes?

Thanks. My brain hurts now.

;-)

[_Dr. Shades]

The inquiry is this: are we permitted to only put a single space after periods like I just did?

Choose whichever method you wish.

[_Gadianton]

I was also taught the two space rule and it's one of the few rules I remember. I thought I had been following this rule and I checked some posts here as well as local documents and it looks like I haven't been. I also looked at an exchange with Analytics and he wasn't following it either.

On the other hand, I checked Sic et Non and it is a consistent two-space blog. I copied text from today into notepad and sure enough, two spaces after every period but not colons. I clicked a random Patheos atheist blog promoted and it was one space.