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[Nabubrush]

I love how I don't need to be a linguist anymore because we have Google.

Actually, all I could have told you anymore was that someone who used that construction was probably from someplace like Pittsburgh.  I would have had to look up the rest of the answer too.  I was a phonologist, not a syntactician.

I am not from Pittsburgh. This construction just seems right to me if I want to save space. And I'm going to use it. And if people give me a hard time, I'll just rub my Technical Communication degree in their face. Not that it'll do anything - I keep trying to convince people not to put two spaces after a period, and I'm getting nowhere on that.

A-Dub, you kill me.

[CortJstr]

I keep trying to convince people not to put two spaces after a period, and I'm getting nowhere on that.

This is a pet peeve of mine. Word has the option of considering 2 spaces an error and I enable it on every computer I use. Even if it isn't mine.

[Gimpson]

I keep trying to convince people not to put two spaces after a period, and I'm getting nowhere on that.

This is a pet peeve of mine. Word has the option of considering 2 spaces an error and I enable it on every computer I use. Even if it isn't mine.

Is this considered incorrect?  I was taught to use the two spaces in school.  Is  two spaces just a relic from typewriter times?

[Nabubrush]

Yes - yes - a thousand times yes! Please tell me that you will stop doing that.

[AugustWest]

Never!  I'll never change.  I was born a two-spacer and I'll die a two-spacer.  You'll never convince me to type otherwise.  The habit is too deeply ingrained.

[St_Zartan]

Is this considered incorrect?  I was taught to use the two spaces in school.  Is  two spaces just a relic from typewriter times?

Probably. When I was taught to use WordPerfect version whatever way the hell back in 1990, we had to put one space after commas, and two spaces after periods. I just fired up MS Word and tried it both ways, to see if it automatically corrected either one (thus suggesting some sort of agreed-upon standard) and it didn't.

I think two spaces in this day and age looks like a vast chasm of wasted space. Maybe it's due to advances in font technology or something.

[wombat]

This construction just seems right to me if I want to save space. And I'm going to use it.

Hooray for Nabu and his authentic regional dialect, whereever the hell it comes from.

The two period rule seems to only apply in certain styles.  I always did it in my academic articles.  Then I sent a 100,000+ word fiction manuscript to a friend who's an author and journalist and she told me that in book manuscripts you do NOT put two spaces after the period.  Do you have any idea how many periods are in 100,000+ words? I wanted to weep.

[Gimpson]

This construction just seems right to me if I want to save space. And I'm going to use it.

Hooray for Nabu and his authentic regional dialect, whereever the hell it comes from.

The two period rule seems to only apply in certain styles.  I always did it in my academic articles.  Then I sent a 100,000+ word fiction manuscript to a friend who's an author and journalist and she told me that in book manuscripts you do NOT put two spaces after the period.  Do you have any idea how many periods are in 100,000+ words? I wanted to weep.

That's what Perl is for.  Could have chewed through your manuscript and fixed it with a two or three line program.  

As for the two spaces, though I certainly can accept that two spaces are unnecessary, I doubt I'll ever be able to break the habit.  Were you young pups here on the board taught the two space thing?  I'm just about 30, and my junior high typing teacher taught me two spaces.  For what it's worth, I did learn to type on a real typewriter.  I had had my C64 since second grade, but didn't learn to touch type until seventh, and then it was in a typing class with real typewriters.

[Nabubrush]

Asher, you are crazy.

I am proudly in my mid to late thirties, but I learned this two/one space thing when I was in college, somewhere in the 1999 area. Also, in terms of a regional dialect, I'm from Alaska, which is a melting pot. My mother is from Chi-town, and my dad's from upstate NY.

A-Dub, your post doesn't look two-spaced.

Zart, two-spacing does do something to the rivers of white space on a page. It's a whole different thing in a two-line post, but in a publication it makes a difference.

In addition, fonts nowadays are designed differently. The font on a typewriter is monospaced. It's a whole diffferent burlap sack full of rabid squirrels.

[Gimpson]

Zart, two-spacing does do something to the rivers of white space on a page. It's a whole different thing in a two-line post, but in a publication it makes a difference.

In addition, fonts nowadays are designed differently. The font on a typewriter is monospaced. It's a whole diffferent burlap sack full of rabid squirrels.

Well, all web browsers that I'm familar with render any string of whitespace as a single space, unless you use   instead of a space.  I've seen some content systems that replace multiple spaces with  s (Livejournal, I think), but phpBB doesn't seem to do it.  

Sentence with two spaces.  Sentence with one space. Is there a difference?

[andalucia]

I too regard one-spacing as fundamentally wrong, and was most emphatically taught to put one space after a comma and two after a period.  I only encountered the one-space style this year when I was working on production at the school paper.  
Weird.

[Nabubrush]

Well, all web browsers that I'm familar with render any string of whitespace as a single space, unless you use   instead of a space.  I've seen some content systems that replace multiple spaces with  s (Livejournal, I think), but phpBB doesn't seem to do it.  

Sentence with two spaces.  Sentence with one space. Is there a difference?

Mmmm . . . .


Look, I'm not Grampa Simpson, but there are these things that you can hold in your hand and read. Publication? Page? I give up . . . you damn kids.

[Nabubrush]

Duobligi post la punkto, ja.

Wait, now, what? Because I posted twice I'm a punk? Them's fightin' words!

[CortJstr]

The rule is:

With a fixed-width font or typewriter: one space after mid-sentence puntuation (commas, semi-colons, end-quotes, abbreviations, &c) except colons. Two spaces after colons or sentence-ending marks.

With a variable-width font: always one space.

Word 2000 will let you choose to enforce either or accept both in the Spelling & Grammar settings. You can also force serial commas and punctuation with quotes here. I'd have to check at work whether Word 2003 has these options.

[wombat]

Have I mentioned lately that I love you all madly.