Cover photo by Linkedin in Business
People can have some seriously staunch opinions regarding the new[er] convention of using only one space after a period versus two.
I had no idea something so seemingly innocuous could induce some people to such passionate emotions. Such defiance and outright denial.
“You can pry my double spaces from my cold, dead keyboard!” proclaims my husband, arms crossed, feet planted.
“You’ll show your age,” I offer.
“Ha! Ridiculous. Everybody uses double spaces. It’s the right way.” This is what he was taught since elementary school, he goes on. Since the days of the Tandy!
“I don’t care what these lazy young people say, you can’t just change the rules of grammar!” argue the Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. And they don’t want to hear what you Millennials and Gen Zs have to say about how typewriters are obsolete, either. They know that. They, like you, have been using computers exclusively for over two decades. They’re not that old. They used double spaces back then, too—on the computer—and will thus continue to do so because “it just looks better with two” or “it helps with reading” or “it’s still the rule” or “their teachers would mark them off if they didn’t, so it’s obviously the right way.”
You can try to cite the Chicago Manual of Style 6.7:
In typeset matter, one space, not two, should be used between two sentences.
But it will fall on deaf ears.
You can go on to cite the Associated Press Stylebook:
Use a single space after a period at the end of a sentence.
You can talk about typography all you want. You can prattle on about how the double-space convention was used to help guide the reader’s eyes when viewing monospaced font. You can go on to explain that this practice not only antiquated and unnecessary but aesthetically displeasing because it creates weird “rivers” of space in your typeset copy when paired with the now ubiquitous proportional fonts.
But care they won’t.
It’s not just that it’s “a hard habit to break,” either; these staunch two-spacers have firmly held beliefs about the virtues of double spaces that they hold on to with religious-like vigor.
Oddly, I don’t remember ever having been taught the two-space convention in school (with the exception of APA style, the only remaining style guide that continues to proscribe it, but that wasn’t until college, and it still wasn’t enforced), yet I still see people younger than I am proclaiming that it’s the way they were taught.
For editors, the solution to fervent double-spacers is simple: use the Word macro to find all double spaces and replace them with one before editing even begins. If you edit for a publisher, the rule is firm; no need to cite it. The publisher won’t accept it another way or will simply fix it themselves in design.
The Humble Pedant 