posted
I found this at the Chicago Manual of Style Frequently Asked Questions website:
quote:The view at CMS is that there is no reason for two spaces after a period in published work. Some people, however—my colleagues included—prefer it, relegating this preference to their personal correspondence and notes. I’ve noticed in old American books printed in the few decades before and after the turn of the last century (ca. 1870–1930 at least) that there seemed to be a trend in publishing to use extra space (sometimes quite a bit of it) after periods. And many people were taught to use that extra space in typing class (I was). But introducing two spaces after the period causes problems: (1) it is inefficient, requiring an extra keystroke for every sentence; (2) even if a program is set to automatically put an extra space after a period, such automation is never foolproof; (3) there is no proof that an extra space actually improves readability—as your comment suggests, it’s probably just a matter of familiarity (Who knows? perhaps it’s actually more efficient to read with less regard for sentences as individual units of thought—many centuries ago, for example in ancient Greece, there were no spaces even between words, and no punctuation); (4) two spaces are harder to control for than one in electronic documents (I find that the earmark of a document that imposes a two-space rule is a smattering of instances of both three spaces and one space after a period, and two spaces in the middle of sentences); and (5) two spaces can cause problems with line breaks in certain programs.
So, in our efficient, modern world, I think there is no room for two spaces after a period. In the opinion of this particular copyeditor, this is a good thing.
posted
I was taught to leave one blank space after the period, unless you are starting a new paragraph.
Some software will now automatically do kerning so it may produce a wider or narrower space between letters to make the words fit the page. I haven’t checked to see what it does to the space after a period.
posted
Thanks, Kolona! I thought we'd already had this discussion but I couldn't find it.
And thanks, Kathleen, for that reference. I was originally taught two spaces, but I have found that some magazines have specifically stated to use one space for their submissions, so I started doing that, but then another magazine's guidelines I just ran across said 2....I guess either way is wrong depending upon who you send it to.
In fact, I've gotten to the point where I hate every formatting topic because there doesn't seem to be any definitive answer.
(But I don't hate those who bring it up, because it is important.)
I always use a Courier font, and I always put two spaces after a period--and I don't plan to do otherwise unless I know exactly what an editor wants (not prefers).
I'll proffer something I read a while back that seemed to make some sense. This resource (I don't remember which one) said if you use a non-proportional font such as Courier, you need to put two spaces after your periods; but if you use a proportional font such as Times New Roman, then you should only put one space after your period.
posted
I'm not going through all 84 pages of it, but at the Learn Writing with Uncle Jim pages at Absolute Write James D. Macdonald (who is a published writer, married to a published writer, and close friends with a number of editors) said that the one space/two space debate is completely meaningless, and either is acceptable in standard manuscript format.
That said, I use one space. For no reason whatsoever, beyond the fact that I learned to write on an old-school Kaypro, way way back in computer stone age, when daisy wheel printers were nifty.
posted
Mac has it right in this case. If you write with two spaces after the period, then you can simply do a find and replace all on ". ">>". " if you want to submit the document to anyone that requires a single space after the period.
I'm not sure what single spacers do. As the man said:
quote:(I find that the earmark of a document that imposes a two-space rule is a smattering of instances of both three spaces and one space after a period, and two spaces in the middle of sentences)
This happens because the above process insn't always fully reversable. I'm a two spacer myself, but sometimes I put spaces in the middle of words and stuff too. I just like spaces, okay?
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Search and replace to standardise when you want to catch however many spaces you already have:
With word, go to Edit / Find and replace, choose 'More'. Make sure 'Use wildcards' is checked.
In 'Find what', type ". {1,}" (without the quotes) In 'Replace with', type ". " (with however many spaces you want) Click 'Find next' a few times to make sure it's working, then click Replace all.
posted
Having been beaten into my head that there are 2 spaces after a period (my mother is a high-school business teacher, so I pretty much learned to type before I learned to write cursive), things are changing. More and more I see people only puting one and, as already shown above, requiring only one.
Posts: 116 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Jules: I've been following along since last winter sometime... I meant going through again to look for that *particular* page. But yeah. Definitely one worth reading. Posts: 253 | Registered: Jan 2004
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