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.
Well, I'm writing a little paper right now. I won't use only one space after periods, because I need the extra spaces to make it five pages, because my brain can only do so much.
I took a linguistics class a few years ago from David Bowie, originally of Maryland, but trained, I believe, at the University of Pennsylvania. I don't remember whether we talked about the "needs washed" v. "needs to be washed" distinction, but he did talk a lot about linguistic issues in Pennsylvania, primarily among the Pennsylvania Dutch population. It was a great class, and I'd like to take more classes from him, but I dropped out of that college, and he now teaches in Florida I understand.