There's TWO spaces between the end of a sentence

[HEMI®Dart]

Did any of you guys know this?



I've been writing w/ 1 space between sentences. My mother told me this last week. My 2869 posts are all incorrect resulting in depression & embarrassment now. :-laf



Above post corrected w/ 2 spaces.



I've been writing w/ 1 space between sentences. My mother told me this last week. My 2869 posts are all incorrect resulting in depression & embarrassment now. :-laf



Edit: 2 or 3 spaces shows up the same as 1 here?

 

[Jengle]

2 spaces at the end of a sentence is correct. Buy mom a cup of coffee.

 

[HEMI®Dart]

Jengle,



Try 2 spaces here. It doesn't work.

 

[Alphacowboy]

Most forum software deletes double spaces. Almost every board you go to will delete spaces any larger than 1.



But yes, 2 is correct.

 

[RankRam]

My lovely wife has this to say:



Not to bore you guys, but the old rule of two spaces came from when we used to type on the old typewriters where the fonts were larger and to better distinguish between sentences, two spaces were used.



About three months ago, I attended a correspondence class and I asked the question about the spacing between sentences. I'm from the old school where you were taught to use two spaces. I was told that the rules changed it is now proper to use either one space or two - just be consistent.

 

[JLEONARD]

You know there's just something about those guys from Enfield... . :-laf

 

[PToombs]

You know there's just something about those guys from Enfield... . :-laf

Too much depression and embarrassment? :-laf

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

Actually, it's not the boards that are changing it to one space. It's html - html will only show one space no matter how many are there unless you use the & nbsp ; code (take the spaces out between the & and . Like this.   See - there's two spaces. I still hit the spacebar twice after a period just by habit because that's what I was taught in the personal typing class I took back in high school.

 

[fox]

Did any of you guys know this?



I've been writing w/ 1 space between sentences. My mother told me this last week. My 2869 posts are all incorrect resulting in depression & embarrassment now. :-laf



Above post corrected w/ 2 spaces.



I've been writing w/ 1 space between sentences. My mother told me this last week. My 2869 posts are all incorrect resulting in depression & embarrassment now. :-laf



Edit: 2 or 3 spaces shows up the same as 1 here?

Just to help with your depression and embarrasment, just go to each of your posts and EDIT THEM!!!!

I was told to use 2 spaces also but found the puter' converted them to one, so I dropped it.

however, WORD allows it.

 

[nickleinonen]

i rarely ever get all my punctuation, spelling or spacing correct. . i don't really care. . and i find i double/triple period almost everything i write/type. . [and i know that is not correct. oh well]

 

[WDaniels]

OH LORD! Only one space, how EVER are we going to live with ourselves? this is the end, Oh woe is me(us). Goodbye cruel website.

I too was taught to use 2 spaces from my school days. Of course that was when rocks were just forming on the face of the earth. Oh well, life goes on.

WD

 

[HEMI®Dart]

I hope "Hammer" see's this thread. He uses no spaces between sentences.

 

[rbattelle]

Wow, I ALWAYS use 2 spaces after the period, and I never noticed the HTML deletes the extra space! Amazing.

I was all set to say "you've got to use 2 spaces after the period, it improves readability!". Obviously it doesn't, since in years of reading posts here I've never noticed the missing space.

Hey Hemi - at least you use periods! There are some people out there whose keyboards didn't come with that key.

Ryan

 

[KevinSmith]

Answer # 1: It really doesn't matter what we think. Momma is always right!

Answer # 2: How does the sentence feel about the spacing? Does it like the extra space or does it feel lost and out of place. Improper sentence stucture can lead to a sentence identity crisis. Next time you should just ask the sentence what he/she/it really wants.

 

[Blu-meanie]

Sounds like something from the teletype days:



Two carriage returns and one line feed at the end of each line.



Never heard of the two spaces before today. How about 5?

Nope, 5 don't work either.

 

[MLee]

Now if we could only find that Spelling correction key! Like ABC with the check sign under it.

 

[fest3er]

Sounds like something from the teletype days:

Two carriage returns and one line feed at the end of each line.

Never heard of the two spaces before today. How about 5?
Nope, 5 don't work either.

The two carriage returns were there for terminals that had very slow print carriages and no buffering. If they used only one, it was likely that the LF and a few following characters would be eaten by a grue. The extra carriage return gave the carriage (print head) time to return to the left margin without losing any data.

As to two spaces after periods, the proper explanation is that when typing on a fixed-pitch typewriter, correct style requires two spaces at the end of each sentence; the extra space makes the text more readable.

Today, almost everything uses proportionally-spaced fonts, which follow typesetting rules. Typesetting dictates a single space at the end of sentences. Look at every newspaper, every book, every magazine, and anything else professionally published in the last 100 years or so that used proportional fonts; you'll see that they all have a single space at the end of each sentence.

Typewriting and typesetting are distinct printing styles; their rules differ somewhat.

N

 

[wcaldwell]

When I joined the Air Force 35+ years ago, they told me that "since you took typing in high school, you are now an Administrative Assistant. " We were taught that you put two spaces between EVERY sentence and double space between paragraphs. And that the easiest way to be sure you are spelling everything correctly (other than to look in a dictionary) was to read the sentence backwards - that way you would have to focus on each word individually.



Wayne

 

[nickleinonen]

was to read the sentence backwards - that way you would have to focus on each word individually.

helps if you know how to spell... i am loving these newer versions of firefox though. . everything i type in a box like this one that i spell wrong gets a red underline. . right click and pick the correct spelling from the available list. . [i had 5 red underlines in this post (including 2 for firefox for not putting a capital "F" on it]

 

[B KIRK]

I hope "Hammer" see's this thread. He uses no spaces between sentences.

LOL. That was the first thing I thought of when I read the title of the post. :-laf