Comments on: Having your world turned upside down by punctuation

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 18:42:07 +0000

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.

By: Simon Elliott

Simon Elliott — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 10:31:56 +0000

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’.

By: Crouching tiger, coding monkey » Dance paper dance

Crouching tiger, coding monkey » Dance paper dance — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 13:47:49 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Jeff Horak

Jeff Horak — Wed, 14 May 2008 22:14:57 +0000

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?

By: Grant

Grant — Fri, 09 May 2008 20:31:01 +0000

Err. Oops. From my wife:

“FYI - my style guide is from my grad work in the early 2000’s, thank you very much!”

By: John Gordos

John Gordos — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:13:29 +0000

Wonder if there is any correspondence to people who took “typing” class, and people who are self-taught “hunt-n-peck”ers

By: Grant

Grant — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:55:48 +0000

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.

By: Sean

Sean — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:10:28 +0000

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.