Sentence Spacing

Double spacing after a full stop used to be due to the fixed widths of letters on typewriters. These days with modern fonts there is extra space built in after the full stop glyph so it's unnecessary. I've been designing and doing typography for the last 18 years or so and still come across people who do add double spaces but for the most part it's older people who started typing on typewriters.
 
I've always double spaced it's what I was taught. It's a constant source of frustration that these forums have always removed my second space.
 
I was taught at high school to double space (35 next week).

However I don't because it's a waste of ****ing time, why would I press the space bar twice when once is sufficient? :rolleyes:

AndyT said:
Single space. I always single spaced, but then changed to double space after I did a lot of work for a certain UK engineering company whose style guide is militantly double space to the point where documents will be rejected for not using double space, even if they are otherwise perfectly correct. Same company also has an odd demand that a space is placed between numbers and units. E.g. 10 kN and not 10kN. To my eye that extra space looks horrible.

Double space was made redundant years ago by modern word processors. I have since gone back to single space, because it is the correct way, but will do the double if I have to just please some jobsworth. Just goes to show that the UK engineering industry is still populated by dinosaurs. It is pointless rejections of deliverables for reasons like this that create unnecessary delays and cost overruns. The big players in the safety-critical industries are all guilty of it.
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I call shenanigans - no self respecting archaic UK engineering company would stoop to using an actually useful metric measurement such as kN... they'd be stubbornly using lbf or something equally convoluted :p
 
I was always taught to double space, however, after a little research online it appears that single space is the correct way of doing it.
 
I thought that's what the full stop was for. To tell you that was the end of a sentence. No need for extra work on your poor thumbs! :) Single spacing all the way!
 
Double spacing after a full stop is defunct and I hate it. I only use it if a client insists on publishing copy with a particularly 'crowded' font.

Having said that, if you use it and like it, go for it.
 
AHarvey said:
I was always taught to double space, however, after a little research online it appears that single space is the correct way of doing it.
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There is no correct way. It's style, pure and simple. Do what you like. Put 3 spaces, just expect people to look at you funny.
 
Vonhelmet said:
There is no correct way. It's style, pure and simple. Do what you like. Put 3 spaces, just expect people to look at you funny.
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While I almost entirely agree, I would suggest everyone use a single space - it's aesthetically more pleasing, easier to read in most digital formats and thoroughly accepted by professionals as correct.
 
dl8860 said:
On that basis you could say "it's not wrong to capitalise every 3rd letter I type". It is wrong.
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Except that would be definitively wrong, because capital letters mean something - starts of sentences and proper nouns, mostly. Spacing is a presentational issue, because it doesn't change the content or meaning of the sentences. There isn't really a consensus on it, as evidenced by the oodles of debates to be found online regarding this.
 
I'm not concerned about the key wearing out, I was just thinking that if you're going to make such a big gap using triple spacing then you may as well save time and just hit the Tab key (unless you're typing on a forum where Tab doesn't create a space).

That just made me realise that I almost never use my little finger to press keys... I use my ring finger for Tab as it naturally rests near that key when I type.
I think my little finger only gets to press Shift or CTRL.
 
suenstar said:
I'm not concerned about the key wearing out, I was just thinking that if you're going to make such a big gap using triple spacing then you may as well save time and just hit the Tab key (unless you're typing on a forum where Tab doesn't create a space).

That just made me realise that I almost never use my little finger to press keys... I use my ring finger for Tab as it naturally rests near that key when I type.
I think my little finger only gets to press Shift or CTRL.
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I need a sarcasm key :D I wasn't being serious about the triple spacing... ;)
 
Haggisman said:
Eugh, not going to argue with that... so that's one point zero zero zero? Oh... wait no it's a thousand! >_<
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Indian numbering is the worst. They have a thing called a "crore", which is 10 million in our system; and a "lakh", which is a hundred thousand in our system. Each of these is marked with a comma. So ten million in our system, looks like 10,000,000, but in Indian it goes 1,00,00,000. They continue in groupings of hundreds from thereon. It's a nightmare. So let's say you have one hundred and twenty one million, two hundred and twelve thousand, two hundred and thirteen, which looks like this in our system: 121,212,213. In Indian they would call it twelve crore, twelve lakh, twelve thousand, two hundred and thirterrn and it would look like this: 12,12,12,213.

ARGH!
 
38 years and I've never double spaced after a period. Only a fully fledged **** would do such a thing. Then I look at the OP and realise, indeed, only a fully fledged **** would do such a thing
 
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