Having your world turned upside down by punctuation
Man did I start something today. So I’ve been working on an article that is due in a week or so and the first draft got reviewed today. One of the first comments in the Word document read like this:
“FYI—the standard now is one space after end punctuation. I replaced all the extra spaces but didn’t track them.”
Whaaaaa?
You’re supposed to use a single space after end punctuation? Really? Where did that come from? How long has it been this way?
This naturally led me to walk around and ask anyone I saw how they do it. My unscientific survey came up with nearly a 50-50 split broken into these two camps:
“You use two spaces?”
“You mean you’re only supposed to use one space?”
The latter group typically then had an existential moment where they considered what else is wrong that they thought they knew. At one point the single space people (Jeff, Paula) were standing looking at the double space people (Me, Alan, Tom) with all of us trying to decide which group was crazier. Even the Word grammar checker couldn’t take a stand by making the number of spaces a configurable option. (The weasel.)
I understand the reason for it, typewriters with mono-spaced fonts versus computers and all but I am still shocked that it took until today for me to find this out. What’s even more bizarre is that arguments over this have been happening on the Internet for years.
I still haven’t been able to peg a date on when this changed happened so I would love to know. Until then the one argument that really swayed me toward single space (ignoring of course all the official style guides and typesetters that say it is the way) came from the Wikipedia Manual of Style
“The bottom line for me, however, is the Emacs commands for moving between sentences: M-e moves forward one sentence and M-a moves back one sentence. These two commands are really handy. If you need to navigate long, unbroken lines, like when editing Wikipedia, they are to live by. Oh, but they only work properly when two spaces are put between each sentence.”
If double spaces are the emacs way of doing of things I think it is pretty clear I need to hunker down and teach myself not to do it anymore. 
The earliest “This ain’t a typewriter” moment that I can remember is Microsoft Word 1.0 on the Mac Plus. Wikipedia and my memory of the world would put that at around 1986. It properly handled the spacing for you so that you didn’t have to space space after every sentence. I previously used WordStar on amber screened CP/M boxes, but have scratched most of that out of my memory.
It would also be interesting to see if there’s a correlation between the one vs two space crowds and crackberry usage.
Comment by Sean — May 9, 2008 @ 2:10 pm
I can’t believe that I could have been missing out on something for like 20 years. Next thing you know I’ll be walking into work saying, “Man did you see that movie Top Gun? That was awesome.”
My first related note is my informal survey is still going strong at 50-50 and age surprisingly isn’t making a difference. I posed the question to a couple of college aged people on my soccer team last night and got one answer for single and one for double.
My second is that my wife was convinced it was two spaces. What’s even funnier is she’s had to write papers for that crazy psychology standard that they change every year just to mess with psych grad students. She was so sure she dug out her old style guide to check, the one from college and published in the early 90’s.
Of course it said single space.
Comment by Grant — May 9, 2008 @ 2:55 pm
Wonder if there is any correspondence to people who took “typing” class, and people who are self-taught “hunt-n-peck”ers
Comment by John Gordos — May 9, 2008 @ 3:13 pm
Err. Oops. From my wife:
“FYI - my style guide is from my grad work in the early 2000’s, thank you very much!”
Comment by Grant — May 9, 2008 @ 4:31 pm
I used double space all the time until a similar note appeared in a document I had written. I prefer the double space and I’m throwing my hat into that ring!
When’s the rumble?
Comment by Jeff Horak — May 14, 2008 @ 6:14 pm
[...] writers. (As opposed to the monkey with a keyboard that posts to this blog.) He knew all about the single space nonsense that messed me up for a solid week and can literally make words dance on a [...]
Pingback by Crouching tiger, coding monkey » Dance paper dance — June 12, 2008 @ 9:47 am
There is no definitive standard, only ‘house style’.
Traditional typesetting used spaces of several widths to enhance readability: em spaces after period, colon, semi-colon, en spaces (or thick spaces 1/3 em) between words, 1/6 em before comma…
To single space or double space only became an issue when the typewriter, with its fixed-width space, became widely used and typists had to devise approximations for the rules of traditional typesetting.
Different cultures have adopted different conventions for these approximations: see the Wikipedia entry for ‘French spacing’ - and then follow your ‘house style’.
Comment by Simon Elliott — July 30, 2008 @ 6:31 am
The younger generation and lazy typesetters pushed us towards single. The American English language has been continually morphing ever since the first immigrant, and ever since English became one of the defacto standards of international commerce communication.
Frankly, I see no difference between typewriter and computer. The single space is simply not easier to read in either format. Those using justified text for looks are not aware of the fact that it has been proven that non-justified text (left edge smooth, right edge jagged) is easier to read; just as it has been proven that serif fonts are easier than sans-serif fonts to read.
This is truely an American laziness, and desire to change for ease. Every where else, the double is the standard.
If you don’t care whether your reader gets your message, then go single, and do full justify.
Otherwise, there are no questions, double it is.
Comment by Tim — August 19, 2008 @ 2:42 pm