How many spaces after a period?
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Apparently, the Modern Language Assoc says it's 1 because of the proprotional fonts.
How many spaces should I leave after a period or other concluding mark of punctuation?
Here's from a different site:
How many spaces after a period? One or two?
As for established styles, Modern Language Association (MLA) goes with the single space as a preference, but leaves the door open to say that there is nothing wrong with using two spaces after ending punctuation marks unless an instructor or editor states a preference one way or another. In this case, it’s best to consider the directions of the person assigning the grade or signing the paycheck.
Wikipedia even chimes in with a little information:
The two spaces convention was brought out by the use of monospaced font on typewriters, and carried on solely by tradition. Most fonts used in word processors since the mid-1990’s have the correct spacing already adjusted, rendering the traditional double space after a full stop (period) obsolete.
This is all shocking to me. I'll have to remember that the next time I write a letter.
How many spaces should I leave after a period or other concluding mark of punctuation?
Here's from a different site:
How many spaces after a period? One or two?
As for established styles, Modern Language Association (MLA) goes with the single space as a preference, but leaves the door open to say that there is nothing wrong with using two spaces after ending punctuation marks unless an instructor or editor states a preference one way or another. In this case, it’s best to consider the directions of the person assigning the grade or signing the paycheck.
Wikipedia even chimes in with a little information:
The two spaces convention was brought out by the use of monospaced font on typewriters, and carried on solely by tradition. Most fonts used in word processors since the mid-1990’s have the correct spacing already adjusted, rendering the traditional double space after a full stop (period) obsolete.
This is all shocking to me. I'll have to remember that the next time I write a letter.
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Always one! I've never even heard of doing two spaces after puncuation in my life!
I've always used two unless I'm in desperate need of room on a text or Twitter!
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two
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I only have to put one space in my assignments for Uni English...
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just so so
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I was taught that two spaces was correct all through high school. Although unless I have something to turn in, it varies.
Originally Posted by divadoll /img/forum/go_quote.gif As for established styles, Modern Language Association (MLA) goes with the single space as a preference, but leaves the door open to say that there is nothing wrong with using two spaces after ending punctuation marks unless an instructor or editor states a preference one way or another. In this case, it’s best to consider the directions of the person assigning the grade or signing the paycheck. Yep, I always go by what the teacher wants. Heck, if he wants three spaces then it'll have three spaces lol.
This reminds me alot of the comma before "and." I remember in elementary we were told to write: The dog, cat and fish. Now it has to be written: The dog, cat, and fish.
Originally Posted by divadoll /img/forum/go_quote.gif As for established styles, Modern Language Association (MLA) goes with the single space as a preference, but leaves the door open to say that there is nothing wrong with using two spaces after ending punctuation marks unless an instructor or editor states a preference one way or another. In this case, it’s best to consider the directions of the person assigning the grade or signing the paycheck. Yep, I always go by what the teacher wants. Heck, if he wants three spaces then it'll have three spaces lol.
This reminds me alot of the comma before "and." I remember in elementary we were told to write: The dog, cat and fish. Now it has to be written: The dog, cat, and fish.
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I remember MLA format always being our English Bible.
Back when I was in school, MLA style was basically
2 spaces after periods and colons (where it's just a dot), 1 space after commas and semi-colons (where it's a dot and a tail). This was to differentiate them on typewritten font and make them easier to distinguish.
With computers and the internet being so prevalent, written works aren't seen nearly as much, and different styled fonts are all over the place. For internet usage, one space is preferred since space on a computer screen is a limited commodity. (With papers, you can always add pages, so a few extra spaces on a single page doesn't make a difference. But online, there's only a limited amount of space on the screen before you have to scroll, and quite honestly a lot of people don't read what they don't NEED to read online, so if they need to scroll, a lot of people will go to another website if they don't feel that more information is really necessary. Similar to newspapers, you'll read the partial story on the front page, but a lot of people won't finish the story somewhere on page E-13. ...But newspapers use multi-columned justified spacing, so they don't necessarily follow the 1-2 space rule, either.)
There's a bunch of studies and theories on how people read and what will make them read more. I'm not sure if the reasons I stated above were necessarily the reasons why the rules changed, but they do support the change.
Adrienne, funny you should say that, when I took my typewriter keyboarding class (ugh I'm old) 3 spaces was occasionally necessary. When you're trying to make something stand out, you'd add spaces:
Where there's 1 space between each letter, and 3 spaces between each word. (Typewriters didn't have a "bold" or "italicize" option.) The newer word processing programs have options to expand/condense the amount of space between each letter so you don't have to literally add extra spaces.
Back when I was in school, MLA style was basically
2 spaces after periods and colons (where it's just a dot), 1 space after commas and semi-colons (where it's a dot and a tail). This was to differentiate them on typewritten font and make them easier to distinguish.
With computers and the internet being so prevalent, written works aren't seen nearly as much, and different styled fonts are all over the place. For internet usage, one space is preferred since space on a computer screen is a limited commodity. (With papers, you can always add pages, so a few extra spaces on a single page doesn't make a difference. But online, there's only a limited amount of space on the screen before you have to scroll, and quite honestly a lot of people don't read what they don't NEED to read online, so if they need to scroll, a lot of people will go to another website if they don't feel that more information is really necessary. Similar to newspapers, you'll read the partial story on the front page, but a lot of people won't finish the story somewhere on page E-13. ...But newspapers use multi-columned justified spacing, so they don't necessarily follow the 1-2 space rule, either.)
There's a bunch of studies and theories on how people read and what will make them read more. I'm not sure if the reasons I stated above were necessarily the reasons why the rules changed, but they do support the change.
Adrienne, funny you should say that, when I took my typewriter keyboarding class (ugh I'm old) 3 spaces was occasionally necessary. When you're trying to make something stand out, you'd add spaces:
Where there's 1 space between each letter, and 3 spaces between each word. (Typewriters didn't have a "bold" or "italicize" option.) The newer word processing programs have options to expand/condense the amount of space between each letter so you don't have to literally add extra spaces.
