Quote:
Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes
I had a professor that was thoroughly against double-spaces so I switched my ways.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
Before we ever had a home PC, my wife taught me that two spaces after a period was the proper way to type. I stayed with that until bulletin boards (remember those?) and early, limited word processors broke that good habit by too many times placing one of the spaces I typed after the period and the next on the line below just before the next sentence. Now I use just one space, unless it involves something to be printed out that I want to look professional.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by badgoodDeb
My typing class in high school taught that it had to be two spaces. This was on real typewriters, not computers. Computers may have changed the rules, but I haven't changed. Yet.
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From what I understand, the "two spaces after the ending punctuation" rule comes from the days of monospace fonts (such as Pica [10 letters per inch]and Elite [12 letters per inch]) on typewriters. You needed two spaces after the ending punctuation to visually separate the sentences.
With the advent of commonly available proportional spaced typefaces the extra space is not needed since the punctuation with the space is enough to visually separate the sentences. However, it should still be proper to put the extra space when using a monospace typeface like Courier New for the reason in the previous paragraph.
That's the only time I put the extra space after a sentence. I follow this rule regardless of how the text will finally be rendered. As an example, I normally send plain-text e-mails and I follow this rule since the received e-mail is usually rendered with a monospace typeface.