There was an essay at Slate ranting that two spaces after a period is no longer necessary and just wrong. As if. It is left over from the age of manual typewriters, when all characters took the same space, yada yada yada. He even notes that it's a convention, but it bugs him no end that it's an outmoded convention. He pays attention to which of his friends persist in this solecism. No, I'm not linking to it.
If my double-spacing after a period marks me as someone who was properly educated in the age of manual typewriters and paid some attention, I'm regarding that as a feature, not a bug.
Two spaces ease reading. He must be a txtr.
ReplyDeleteActually, the latest MLA Style Manual dictates (and yes, I use that word purposefully) that we are to leave just one space after periods.
ReplyDeleteI still use two and don't "correct" my students if they do too. We're just a bunch of free-spirited hippies running willy-nilly over the grammar czar's lawn. Case in point, the Oxford comma is optional--student's choice! *gasp!*
The last time I checked, there were several different types of fonts (even a kind called mono-spaced), and several different types of white-space. But what do I know; I just trust what I read in the TeX manual.
ReplyDeleteErin, I take the view "whatever key turns the lock" in formal writing. If they say you have to attach ribbons to all submissions, attach ribbons. But this applies only in those situations in which they can hurt you for not playing by their rules.
ReplyDeleteI not only put two spaces after my periods but include a comma before the "and" in a series. That's right. Try and stop me.
ReplyDeleteThat is the Oxford comma, also called the Princeton comma. I prefer it, as I believe it is clearer in some situations and I like consistency in the other instances. Also, it cues reading aloud better.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad that in science we've moved from the WYSIWYG model of word processing to the compiled model of word processing (LaTeX). I don't give two shakes of my fist what is and is not officially in style-- I just type it however the hell I want, putting white space wherever the hell I want, and let the compiler sort everything out. To say that writers should be manually worrying about spacing issues like this is to say that those writers' time is not very valuable.
ReplyDeleteI am more seriously twisted--I use semicolons (+ a space) and colons (+ 2 spaces) and em dashes (or the poor emulation, the double hyphen).
ReplyDeleteLarry, are those now frowned upon? I use them all the time (plus a generous helping of parentheses). I just learned about hemi-semicolons via this teacher's blog: http://hemisemicolon.blogspot.com/
ReplyDeleteAs most of my writing is now blogging, and thus conversational and informal, I very much punctuate by ear rather than by rule.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if I am still easily capable of a more formal style?
That hemisemicolon thing was interesting, but seems too small a distinction to bother about. Interesting that the quoted source was concerned that English Composition was ill-taught a century ago, eh?