It is time to drag yourself into the modern era! There is only one space after a period in modern typesetting (word processing.) In the old typewriter days, the characters were placed on the page with mono-spacing. That is why you had to use two spaces to make the sentence look as though it was ended. Now, though, characters are placed on the page by the computer using proportional spacing and the period carries it own extra space to signal the end of a sentence.
Don't believe me....just check out these sources:
http://webword.com/reports/period.html
http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/spaces.html
http://www.mla.org/style/style_faq/style_faq3 Modern Language Association (MLA)
http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/011803.htm
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=112 a short film
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/typespacing/a/onetwospaces.htm
And the hangers-on:
http://roselli.org/adrian/articles/2spaces.asp
if you just can't break the habit, go ahead and do your ol' thing and then FIND/REPLACE the two spaces for one space throughout the document. Fix all those holes that make your document look like Irish lace!
Don't believe me....just check out these sources:
http://webword.com/reports/period.html
http://wsu.edu/~brians/errors/spaces.html
http://www.mla.org/style/style_faq/style_faq3 Modern Language Association (MLA)
http://www.getitwriteonline.com/archive/011803.htm
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=112 a short film
http://desktoppub.about.com/cs/typespacing/a/onetwospaces.htm
And the hangers-on:
http://roselli.org/adrian/articles/2spaces.asp
if you just can't break the habit, go ahead and do your ol' thing and then FIND/REPLACE the two spaces for one space throughout the document. Fix all those holes that make your document look like Irish lace!
4 comments:
I've given up pointing this out to people with whom I've worked on projects.
They tell me they can't change!
Aloha
You are "too hip for the room", Sharon, which is what a presenter at a conference said about Answerland, when the statewide service name was changed to L-Net... Now if I can only remember the spacing rule!
I once had to take a typing test (as part of a pre-employment test) using a computer where the software required me to double space after each period. Needless to say, my speed took a major hit as I tried to unlearn years of single spacing after a period for an ill-designed test.
I am an old-timer and I changed easily! You can always do the FIND-REPLACE option. I can betcha that this will take some time to ferret out. See Frank's comment. I even had a high school teacher of computer applications insisting on teaching her students the same two spaces after the period because the textbook said so. I wonder what the copyright on that sucker is?
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