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Are you a "two spacer"? (1 Viewer)

Sam Posten

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No not with your cars, with your spaces after periods. If so, Slate says you are WRONG.

http://www.slate.com/?id=2281146


I'm a lifetime two spacer and you will never ever break me of this. Ever.
 

Citizen87645

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From a HTML coding perspective, two spaces adds to code bloat as to generate that extra space requires the addition of



(non-breaking space). HTML only recognizes one space between elements.
 

Ockeghem

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In typing class, this is what I was taught. I continue to use two spaces, with the exception of books I am working on at the moment. One publisher wants single spaces (as in keying in rather than typing), so I comply since I want them to publish my work. But the other publisher isn't as picky when it comes to that, for reasons of their own (kind of like footnotes vs. endnotes).
 

Charles Smith

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A good question. I was born and bred a two-spacer, learning to type at an early age on whatever old Remington or Royal, etc., we had in the house. A few years ago I heard that the practice isn't necessarily correct, so I worked to become flexible with it. Now I find I change instinctively, depending on where I'm typing, who I'm typing to, and the overall look (type of document, the font, etc.).

Before responding, I had to go back to a couple of posts in different threads to see what I've been doing here! Looks like two, even though there's no reason for it. But I'll bet I'm not consistent with it, either.
 

Patrick Sun

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That article failed to convince me that 2-spacers are wrong. I hate that HTML removes extra spaces that I type online.
 

Patrick_S

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I’m probably a little older than most of you and of course I was taught to use two spaces. While in school this had the tangible benefit of using up more page area for those pesky page specific assignments.


I have found that now with the advent of Word Processors and laser printers that I’m a one spacer. I think it looks good and is acceptable.


Times change gentlemen and so do styles; two spacing is a thing of the past.
 

Citizen87645

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It's not so much that it removes them, it just ignores them.

Originally Posted by Patrick Sun

That article failed to convince me that 2-spacers are wrong. I hate that HTML removes extra spaces that I type online.
 

Ockeghem

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And thank goodness that Word has a find and replace that can change all 'two spaces' to 'one spaces' globally, especially when you have some documents that are around 1300 pages in length.
 

Al.Anderson

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I also am a two-spacer, despite being told repeatedly that one is now correct. Sometimes I throw in three just to really piss them off.
 

Johnny Angell

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Originally Posted by Patrick Sun

That article failed to convince me that 2-spacers are wrong. I hate that HTML removes extra spaces that I type online.

I'm a 2 spacer and that article has got me thinking about it. I learned to type on a manual typewriter and was taught 2 spaces. But it's a valid point that with proportional typefaces, 2 spaces may no longer be necessary. He wrote the article with single spaces and it didn't bother me.


I guess I'm going to have to start paying to attention to what I read online to see how widespread the single space phenomenon is.
 

Citizen87645

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I also learned two space in high school typing class. Did it up through college in the 90s and then went to a basic design seminar, I think about newsletters or something, where the presenter basically said don't do two spaces. I don't quite remember his reasons, but I've been doing single spaces for over a decade now. :)
 

Ken Chan

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Originally Posted by Johnny Angell

I'm a 2 spacer and that article has got me thinking about it. I learned to type on a manual typewriter and was taught 2 spaces. But it's a valid point that with proportional typefaces, 2 spaces may no longer be necessary.

If you look at virtually all professionally-typeset books and magazines, they use a single space. Two spaces create easily seen "holes" on the page.


I also learned two spaces on a typewriter, but gladly switched to single spaces on computers (don't recall when exactly, but way back).


And yes, HTML compresses all contiguous whitespace (which include tabs, carriage returns, and line feeds) into a single space:


You can type

your paragraph like

this


and it's all "smoothed out" for you. (The WYSIWYG editor here inserts as appropriate to preserve the formatting.)
 

EricW

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i do 2-spaces. but then i usually don't capitalize either. so two-spacing, in a way, further emphasizes the separation of sentences for me. there was a thread on this subject in this forum a while back.
 

Bryan X

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I'm a 2 spacer. The only time I don't use two spaces is when texting.
 

Yee-Ming

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Two spaces. Reading that Slate article with the single-spaces, seemed "wrong", now that my attention was drawn to it.

Taking a quick flip through Newsweek, which I was reading earlier, suggests that while they may not rigidly two-space, they try to "allocate" more space after full-stops (periods) when space is available, which is probably pretty common when justifying relatively narrow columns of text -- indeed, sometimes there is plenty of extra space and gaps between words are several spaces wide.
 

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