077 Period space space

Period, space, space

Whoops, backspace

Recently my husband Harry told me that I was the end-all authority on grammar. (Those of you who follow my blog know this is not entirely correct.) I am more knowledgeable than he [catch that pronoun choice?] and he wanted an opinion on a heavy topic:

One space or two after a period?

As with many baby-boomers, Harry was way behind the times, but I sympathize. My thumb just won’t stop that double-up on the spacebar. My usual strokes after a period are two spaces and a backspace. It give a feeling a completion—I have completed a sentence! I also double space at the end of a paragraph. Another completion celebration!

I, of course, turned to the net to find out how we got here. The usual discussion points to old typesetting and typewriters with monotype (non-proportional) spacing. There is a standard diagram included in each discussion. Modern word processing, etc., adjusts the spacing between letters so that an i or l take up less space than an m or w. Typewriters gave every letter the same space; therefore, the double space was necessary to indicate the end of a sentence and to aid reading flow.

Another argument is that typesetters, who had no standard for spacing after a period for hundreds of years, started changing to a single space while the rest of us were still using typewriters. Think how many pages of paper a publisher could save in a big book with just one space following the period instead of two. I guess it adds up. I did like one commentator who stated that a masterpiece of literature would still be a masterpiece whether there were one or two spaces.

Blogspot, the purveyor of this blog, as with most web applications does not tolerate double spaces. Backspace, sigh, I am trying to change!

And then I discovered I was being rude in my text messaging because I end a sentence with a period! My text messages are usually about meeting times and places, not running conversations. The thought is that the period emphatically shuts down the conversation. Okay?! (Question marks and exclamation points are not considered rude.)

I am getting tired of backspacing after each sentence so I guess I will quit

Trish