posted
I decided not to post this under the other courier subject because it has a life of its own -- less about system formatting than manuscript formatting.
I don't recall when, but a long time ago an English teacher told me to always end a sentence with two spaces. At some point this became automatic when typing; I always hit the space bar twice after a period or question mark. I knew that online, I never saw the two-space sentences, but that never bothered me because I know that HTML ignores superfluous whitespace; you can hit enter a dozen times after the end of a paragraph in raw HTML, and you'll see exactly one newline character on the finished page. Code tends to work like that.
Then I read this piece by Farhad Manjoo on Slate, did a little research online, and saw that he was right. You're never supposed to use the two-space sentence separator. However, he also explained the origin of the two-space rule: when reading the monospace fonts like Courier that were commonplace in the 60's and 70's on typewriters, using two-space sentences (hereafter abbreviated TSS) was better for reading because monospace fonts don't make the word forms we're used to in just about every walk of life, and so were used to help the reader when dealing with printed Courier.
Well, just about every manuscript formatting guide I've ever seen instructs you to submit your work in monospaced font, using underlines for italics, etc. The question is - do we use TSS or not? This is precisely the one case TSS was deemed appropriate for.
What's the verdict? TSS or no? I can't send off my manuscript when I finish it with the wrong spacing - clearly that will be the one and only issue that makes or breaks my work and determines whether or not I'll get piles of rejections or Stephen King-level checks and movie deals! The world hangs in the balance - what is the right answer?
posted
I don't know that there is an "official" ruling is on this. I've heard from multiple sources that you can use either.
On a personal level, I hate double spaces at the end of sentences. It has the annoying tendency to make sentences that start on new lines have a space gap in front of them, and that makes me crazy.
posted
Don't use two spaces after a period, unless you're typing on a thirty-year-old typewriter. Then, it was done for clarity. Computers have made the practice of putting that extra space in obsolete. It shouldn't get your manuscript rejected, but it could be distracting.
Posts: 1993 | Registered: Jul 2009
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posted
This came up a while ago, and the verdict was that we should use single space due to formatting needs of typesetters. I also learned to double space - back when I was learning on a typewriter. You should be able to change you entire document using the find-replace function of Word. Just put a double space in the Find field and a single space in the replace field - it should work.
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posted
I did make the change, I was just wondering if it was correct to do since the exclusive case where you sort of want TSS is when reading printed monospace font, the exact formatting of manuscripts.
Also, find & replace can be tricky when you're looking for double-space instances. Regular expressions involving the '\s' character catch all whitespace, so 'space, newline' or 'newline, newline' was also caught. If you're doing manual tabs at the beginning of paragraphs, 'newline,tab' will get caught at the beginning of every single paragraph. What got me was the scene breaks separated in my case by 'newline, space, #, space, newline' which just became a random # in the middle of a paragraph.
Also, Jer's Novel Writer doesn't let you replace \s\s with \s - but you can replace \s\s with ' ' (an actual space).
posted
Wow. This is a hard habit to break. I didn't realize it was a typography issue; I assumed it was a function of when you learned how to type and that it didn't matter to readers or to editors.
I'm a two-spacer and don't think it would be easy to change my typing habits. I could fix it in editing, though. My copy of Word doesn't flag it as an error either way, so I assumed it wasn't one.
posted
I have retrained myself to single-space after punctuation - it is possible to do, but it will slow you down at first. Fortunately, I have found that of all my fingers, my thumb has the most pliable memory (I am double-jointed as well).
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posted
Deep in the bowels of settings on Word, you should be able to tell it to tag it with a squiggly green line when you double space.
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posted
I was taught TSS myself, but I hail from the Dark Ages of manual typewriters. I lost the habit when posting on BBSs, where every byte was precious space. However, I still find TSS easier to read, regardless of font. One of the follies of computer fonts is that justified text often squishes the spaces between words down to almost nothing. I've even seen that in printed books.
The oddest spacing I've ever seen was from an Australian writer (I bought a fanzine from her once, tho I think she was also a journalist in Real Life[tm]) ... she used TWO spaces between words, and NONE between sentences!
(Here using underscores to forcefully represent a second space, since HTML won't gracefully do it.)
A few years later I saw a typewriter that defaulted to this very behaviour -- it was of ca. 1930 vintage, and was owned by a student newspaper. WTF???!!
posted
Interesting. I, too, was taught TSS when I was learning to type on the manuals. Fortunately for me, I guess, I landed a job a few years later having to type to format for an insurance company. They used only single space sentence endings. Got used to it quickly and have used it ever since.
I see TSS every once in a while and it still phases me sometimes.
posted
When you do the find/replace, find "SpaceSpace" replace with "Space" (don't write the word space.) When I was typesetting that was the first step. (I learned from hard experience that I needed to do it a couple of times because sometimes people accidentally do three or four.)
I don't think it's a deal breaker for anyone, but it annoys some people more than others. The people it annoys tend to be younger, so I guess that means it's quickly becoming the way of the world.
posted
Do not stress about it if you put two spaces after a period. Any editor of any consequence knows it's an ingrained habit for many writers, and it is still considered proper manuscript format, so it will not hurt you (unless, of course, their guidelines specifically say to put only one space after a period.)
Find and replace for two spaces in your word processor is not tricky at all: Type two spaces into the Find box and one space into the Replace box. (And, for those brave souls editing a manuscript in a program that uses regular expressions for finding and replacing, don't use '\s\s', just use two spaces.)
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