Two spaces or one?

Like he often does, John Scalzi pointed me to an article about the number of spaces between sentences, a subject about which he’s apparently pretty passionate.

I’ve never put much thought into how many spaces I put between sentences. I mean, I always used two, but it never occurred to me to wonder why. I certainly had no idea people felt so strongly about it (although that shouldn’t surprise me – people get worked up about everything else, so why not sentence spacing?), and I don’t really see a difference aesthetically. I’m willing to convert to one space (I imagine it’ll become second nature eventually, but right now it’s slowing me down), if only because it’s logical.

7 Comments

  1. momma betty

    That’s the problem. Habit.I’ve known for some time about this rule, but to make myself conscious enough to change it is too hard and not worth the effort.

  2. I know that the whole two spaces thing, used to be for type-writers or something, but I can’t stop myself from doing it. I don’t think I’ll ever convert. I like it.

  3. Jessica

    I’ve never used two spaces. And I’m one of those people who feels very passionately about it. A lot of the articles submitted to me have two spaces between sentences and it drives me batty. I have to go through every one and take all the extra spaces out.

  4. I use two spaces even though I know the rule has changed to one. I took TYPING (as apposed to KEYBOARDING) in high school — way back in the late seventies — and it was two spaces after a period, one after a comma, two after a colon, one after a semi-colon and on and on and on.

    One or two doesn’t really matter to me, I just do two out of habit.

  5. Zannah

    I’m paying attention to my spaces for now. Unless this becomes a habit in the next two days, though, I’m probably going to give it up. Too hard to remember. And re-training is hard. I taught myself to type correctly around 1995, I think, and even when I was hunting and pecking with two fingers, I used two spaces.

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