How Many Spaces After A Period?

[+ poolboy48220]

I was taught two spaces after a period, in typing class on IBM Selectrics, required for all sophomores in 1975. Current style is one space. My copy-editor sister has spoken. I still do two spaces if I'm not paying attention.

[TruthBTold]

And of course three spaces to signify that something from the following text has been removed and then begun again.

[+ José Soplanucas]

I did not even know about this standard. In Spanish it has always been one space.

[Rudynate]

Tennis.

 

When I was in high school, our Health class, taught by a block-headed PE teacher with a room temperature IQ required a paper.

[ericwinters]

They say that your resume has about x seconds to make an impression. you really think that during those x seconds the reviewer is checking the spacing after a period?

 

I learned 2 spaces, and then, sometime in the 90s, stopped using 2 spaces. I went back to 2 spaces after a client asked me to use 2 spaces in my work product for them. When I bother to notice, it's mostly two spaces but I see a fair amount of work with single spaces after the period. If we are moving to a single space after a period, it's only because people don't receive formal training in keyboarding anymore so aren't familiar with that convention. So it's actually a result of having a marketplace full of poorly trained keyboardists.

 

You would be surprised

[Rudynate]

You would be surprised

 

That's one of those situations that can't help but work out perfectly, even when it looks like it didn't. Nobody ever likes to be screened out. But in screening someone out as a prospective employee over something niggling like one or two spaces after a period, they have also done the prospect a favor by screening themselves out as possible employer for the applicant, because, who, in their right mind, would want to work in an organization that gets hung up on details like that. Fortunately, with a soft labor market, employers are going to have relax some of those pathological employment criteria.

[ericwinters]

That's one of those situations that can't help but work out perfectly, even when it looks like it didn't. Nobody ever likes to be screened out. But in screening someone out as a prospective employee over something niggling like one or two spaces after a period, they have also done the prospect a favor by screening themselves out as possible employer for the applicant, because, who, in their right mind, would want to work in an organization that gets hung up on details like that. Fortunately, with a soft labor market, employers are going to have relax some of those pathological employment criteria.

 

I agree

[+ sam.fitzpatrick]

That's one of those situations that can't help but work out perfectly, even when it looks like it didn't. Nobody ever likes to be screened out. But in screening someone out as a prospective employee over something niggling like one or two spaces after a period, they have also done the prospect a favor by screening themselves out as possible employer for the applicant, because, who, in their right mind, would want to work in an organization that gets hung up on details like that. Fortunately, with a soft labor market, employers are going to have relax some of those pathological employment criteria.

 

There are positions where this is more critical than others. One of my close peers at work manages our internal communications team. He usually has several highly-qualified applicants for a position on the team - many more than he could make time to interview. He uses the applicants' writing style in the resume as a screening for selecting the final interview candidates, including whether or not there are two spaces after the period.

[+ Avalon]

This is such a great discussion! I was completely unfamiliar with two spaces!

[Rudynate]

There are positions where this is more critical than others. One of my close peers at work manages our internal communications team. He usually has several highly-qualified applicants for a position on the team - many more than he could make time to interview. He uses the applicants' writing style in the resume as a screening for selecting the final interview candidates, including whether or not there are two spaces after the period.

 

In a soft job market such as we have been in, employers resort to these pathologic hiring criteria because they can. In the developing soft labor market they will find the applicant pool has dried up and instead of rejecting an outstanding applicant because he/she is period challenged, they will have to pay that same applicant a fat signing bonus in order to get them to accept a job.

[Rudynate]

There are positions where this is more critical than others. One of my close peers at work manages our internal communications team. He usually has several highly-qualified applicants for a position on the team - many more than he could make time to interview. He uses the applicants' writing style in the resume as a screening for selecting the final interview candidates, including whether or not there are two spaces after the period.

 

 

Shame on him. There's a special place in Hell for people who subject job applicants to that sort of degradation.

[realeasymoney]

Uno

[Lchnsf]

If we are moving to a single space after a period, it's only because people don't receive formal training in keyboarding anymore so aren't familiar with that convention. So it's actually a result of having a marketplace full of poorly trained keyboardists.

They already stopped teaching cursive - as technology progresses and we just dictate to our phones and computers they will stop teaching keyboarding as well.

[Epigonos]

I took a one semester typing class in junior high school sometime in the dark ages. Probably the best public school class I ever took. To this day I touch type. During my university days I made extra money typing term papers, senior papers and master degrees papers. I had several people approach me to type their PhD dissertations but was never willing to put out that type of effort.

I learned to use two spaces after a period but I am well aware that current practice is evolving to one space. I try to use just one space but the whole typing thing with me is so automatic that I'm having a difficult time making the change.

Edited July 29, 2018 by Epigonos

[TruthBTold]

It appears that two spaces was the customary usage. At least it appears it was taught in most schools. It now appears that it is evolving to be just one space. Has anyone found why the evolution? The amount of space that is saved by subtracting one space after a sentence from a paper, etc., can't be that much.

[Samfoslom]

In junior high school typing class, I was taught 2 spaces after a period, always. Still do it today, sometimes, out of habit, even in texts.

 

Typewriter convention is 2 spaces after a period, which I was taught in typing class. 2 spaces after a state and before the zip code too. Also, as an aside, no period after Ms, because, unlike Mr. and Mrs, it is not an abbreviation for anything.

[+ FreshFluff]

The computer typesetting program "troff" (from c. 1970) put two spaces after a period even with proportional fonts, regardless of how many you provided in the inputted document. Many articles in the Bell System Technical Journal and several computer science text books were set using this program for the next 15 to 20 years. And I have to say, I've just gotten used to the way it looks and prefer it that way.

 

 

Sounds like a precursor of LaTex.

[+ sync]

The following Business Insider article, while short in length, is an interesting and rather complete synopsis of the transition from the use of two spaces to one space. As for me personally, if the world has difficulty with my use of two spaces, the world can kiss it.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-should-never-add-two-spaces-after-a-period-2015-5

[Guy Fawkes]

For the most part when we were typing on paper we used fixed width character fonts. Two spaces made it easier to see the end of lines.

 

Now a days we use proportionally spaced fonts which is easier to read. Access to typesetting software took a while to spread, which is why the habit was slow to die off.

 

I actually used a linotype machine for a while to help learn how to typeset. I worked on one of the first newspaper publishing systems for the Chicago Times. The system wrote directly to a descendant of the linotype and could write an entire slug for a story column in one pass.

 

-30-

 

(Don't blame me, he started me rambling!)

Edited July 29, 2018 by Guy Fawkes

[+ tassojunior]

The way some people ramble you wonder if they know what a period even is.

[Guy Fawkes]

I refuse to kiss either of your spaces!

 

The following Business Insider article, while short in length, is an interesting and rather complete synopsis of the transition from the use of two spaces to one space. As for me personally, if the world has difficulty with my use of two spaces, the world can kiss it.

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-you-should-never-add-two-spaces-after-a-period-2015-5

[Guy Fawkes]

This one • right¿

 

The way some people ramble you wonder if they know what a period even is.

Edited July 29, 2018 by Guy Fawkes

[+ sync]

I refuse to kiss either of your spaces!

 

Much appreciated.

[Guy Fawkes]

(I'm going to take a much needed nap now, the world is safe from my humor for a couple hours)

[+ Charlie]

This is a subject that has never swum into my ken before the appearance of this thread. I never took typing in high school--no male in my class did that. When I did start typing papers in college, I was a hunt-and-peck typist, and I still am (which is why there are often several more posts before I have finished trying to add my own). It never occurred to me that there might be some rule about how many spaces to leave after a period. When I had an important paper to submit, I gave it to a professional to type for me. I didn't start typing regularly until email came along, and I still have no idea how to text. (I have just been notified that four messages have appeared since I started writing this.)