Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

I confess. I am a two space typist. In my defense, though, I did learn to type on a manual typewriter. That was the standard procedure. I've tried using only one space between sentences, but with 30 years of experience the other way, it just doesn't work for me. A double space is automatic.

And I thought that little roll of correcting tape you could insert between the paper and type bar was a huge advance over messy correcting fluid (which I swear gave me a buzz when used excessively in a poorly ventilated room).

Talk about memories, Martha ... I got onboard the "computer revolution" early. Maybe 84 or 85. Some business donated an IBM AT to our school when they upgraded to the XT. Nobody at the school really knew really knew (or wanted to learn) how to use it. I taught science and figured I should. So the principal let me take it home to play around with. Figured out the basics in a couple weeks.

Then came my great moment of discovery. At a local office supply store they had a rack of 5.5" floppy discs (remember those?) and I found one with an early word processing program called New York Edit. It went way beyond the mono-spaced Courier text you were forced to use in *.txt files, providing rudimentary formatting capabilities and a few extra fonts. As I started using it for writing tests and reports, and got used to the almost magical process of cutting and pasting, typing over errors to correct them, and inserting bold, italic, and underlined text, I realized this software was going to change the way I write. And it did.

I sold my electric typewriter while it still had some value on the used market and never looked back. Who could imagine living with anything but a word processor these days? And how many kids these days have even seen a typewriter?

gothamxi said:

This is why you need two spaces:

"These resources are aimed at supporting teachers of English outside of the U.S. Printed materials include…"

That is two sentences that read as one. It looks like U.S. Printed is a proper noun of some sort.

–Taken from http://exchanges.state.gov/englishteaching/resources-et.html

Totally agree gothamxi. In fact, I posted a similar example in another thread related to the topic of double spaces. Just like putting punctuation marks outside of quotation marks, there are some instances where the writer is forced to "violate the rules" in order to avoid ambiguity.

That said, the consensus, at least on this forum, seems to put the onus on the writer to say the same thing differently to avoid either ambiguity OR breaking the rules. In your example, by simply spelling out "United States" the ambiguity could have been avoided. Probably too much to expect of any writer working for the government though. And your example did come from a .gov website.

I have made the transition to single spaces. Took me a couple months to break the habit, but it's become second nature now.

I learned two spaces while learning typing on a manual typewriter in high school (ca. 1982). And I continued to use two spaces until two things convinced me not to.

1. I now write computer code. "Whitespace" (spaces, tabs, any non-printing character) is treated as a single entity, no matter how many of them are used. In code, we use tabs or spaces to indent for readability. So when I type "This is one sentence.  This is two," and use two spaces between them, when HTML renders it, it renders the two spaces as one. Unless you replace one of those spaces with a non-breaking space ( ). Since it is very annoying to type   over and over and over again, I just got used to always using only the one.

2. I also am an amateur writer (I'm not published, yet). A number of places specifically state in their submission guidelines that they want to see only one space after the end punctuation.

That second one can be stated thusly: "Consult the style guide of whatever entity you're writing for. If it specifically says to do it one way or the other, then do it that way."

I'm sorry, but that "… U.S. Printed…" example is kinda bogus. Why would you justify a rule for all cases by an unusual circumstance? Why not add a space if the preceding sentence is not otherwise clearly ended? Why, in a language where "one size fits all" is unheard of, should we have only one way to indicate the end of one sentence and the start of the next? And who's the authority who gets to establish the standard? I'm right, so it might as well be me.

Peter

Glenn said:

One question I ask myself is, in a language that distinguishes in its typography a hyphen from an em-dash from an en-dash, why is it so hard to conceive of a different spacing for the end of a sentence? To me, any argument for uniform single spacing would be applicable to any number of other typographical distinctions, and vice versa. I suspect that the space question was, in fact, influenced by technology as an aid to text searching.

Excellent question. Written communication in any language involves consideration of spelling, grammar, punctuation, and typography (no comments about serial commas please, as that's my style, and I'm sticking to it). Each of those components provide choices, spelling perhaps least so, but even there one has occasional alternatives.

Typography seems to provide the greatest number of alternatives, style manuals notwithstanding. I see no real problems with using single or double spaces (or both), even in the same document ... if you really need to. But I still maintain that ANY sentence can ALWAYS be rewritten to avoid ambiguity while using only single spaces. See my earlier comment regarding that "U.S. Printed" example.

I was taught in my 70s typing class that it was two spaces after a period.

I was also taught that within a quotation, it was one space after a period.

Go figure.