I grew up during a time of transition with typing. We had a typewriter and a black and green screened computer. By the time I had graduated high school typing your papers was still not mandatory and not everyone had computers in their homes. By the end of college it was ingrained in me to put two spaces after the ending punctuation or risk the wrath of the red pen losing points.
Some of the articles I have read state the two space rule was originally used because of the spacing with typewriters. There was just not enough room to separate sentences from looking like one big run on.
Now with computers we can use many different fonts and are able to change spacing. So it brings up the thought should we still be using two spaces?
I'm not sure if I'm completely sold on it yet. What do you all think?
Here are some links to articles regarding this topic:
http://www.mla.org/style/style_faq/mlastyle_spaces
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/typespacing/a/onetwospaces.htm
http://grammar.about.com/od/punctuationandmechanics/f/How-Many-Spaces-Go-After-A-Period.htm
It's a real conundrum, isn't it. I always use to dbl space (circa 1980's-1990's) my résumé, coverletters, and everything else. The moment I got a computer with a decent collection of proportional fonts, I broke that habit much the way I did when I discovered I had to relearn the position of certain special characters on computer keyboards as the manual typewriter I was using positioned the single quote (apostrophe) over the #8 key AND the letter "L" key doubled as the #1 (in lower case).
ReplyDeleteIf proponents of single space typing use the argument of proportional fonts as their main reason, then using fixed width fonts (monospace) like Courier and Andale Mono surely require dbl spacing after a period. I write screenplays in my spare time and not only do I use dbl spacing, I type my scenes on my vintage manual typewriter. If I'm updating my blog, I format my entries as scenes. Because it's so difficult to format a film script in html, and html went ahead and solved the dbl space issue on its own by forcing single spaces wherever it sees more than one typed blank space together, I scan my scenes into the computer from hard copies and upload them to my blog.
That's great that you found ways to re-train yourself. I am not sure if I will be able to. I think it may be easier for me once I start taking the copy editing classes in the winter and re-learn all the rules. I am so used to writing as I speak now since it's been several years since I was in grad school.
ReplyDeleteI really like the idea that your blog posts are formatted as scenes. It makes things interesting.
Sorry this is a late response but my original comment got eaten by the cyberspace monkeys.