Just Post

I had the good fortune of attending a university that used the APA style guide, which gave me the opportunity to break free from the horrible MLA format that I learned in high school. So, no double space after a period for me, despite my advanced age.

Note: I understand that this is a typewriter thing, but while I had occasion to use a typewriter as a kid and teen, they were mostly no longer relevant already and I was never really taught anything directly related to typewriter typing. It is ridiculous that MLA stuck with that rule for so long (I don't know if they have dropped it since).

Just use Find/Replace.

Find (double space) Replace with (single space)

While I'm definitely in the "single space" camp myself, and have previously been pretty annoyed by people who still use two spaces, I actually like how often I see the double spaces on Lemmy because it reminds me that there are quite a few people over 25 on here. I'm not quite 40, and I don't think I was ever taught anything other than single space, but I have friends that still do two spaces.

I was taught to do it this way in computer class 25 years ago. But I quit the habit sometime in the mid 2010s.

It's a major pet peeve of mine to see two spaces after a period.

Yeah, I’m old. When I was in high school, I was required to take a typing class before I could take a computer class. A computer class on the Apple ][e. (I said I was old!) On a typewriter, it was correct to add 2 spaces after a period, and that’s how I learned. I did it on the computer for a long time, but I eventually broke the habit. It wasn’t easy to break that muscle memory though!

I always thought that it is because, after a period, in theory, you would take a slightly longer pause when speaking. Like the break between the last sentence and this sentence in your head.

There's a user at work who puts quadruple ellipses after each sentence he types. It's just like he holds down . for a few seconds. I hate it.

Holy shit the traffic on this post is crazy

My god, think of all those wasted bytes just storing extra spaces. /s

It's about the typeface. Back in the day of manual or electric typewriters, we had monospace fonts, meaning that every character had the same width. A lowercase "i" got the same horizontal width as an uppercase "M".

Now we have word processors and proportional fonts, and the spacing after a period is built into the typeface.

One space after a period is correct, unless you are using Courier (or similar).

I never did that, even on a typewriter. Word processors do a decent enough job of spacing and it’d just look weird online.

Never heard of this nonsense in my life and I'm a office worker who's over 40. What God foresaken American sub-cultural trashpile did this come from that these idiot kids from adjacent refuse heaps could start assuming everyone over 40 does?

I get annoyed by trailing spaces for no reason.Trailing paragraphs before a page break are cursed, though.

I stopped doing this before I turned 40. :P