MSU Red Cedar Message Board

1 with informal, internet and Emails, and 2 when I write regulatory reports to the State and Feds.

I always use two, as that's what I was taught in school.

Interesting article. Until this thread, it had never occurred to me that the two-space rule was long dead with typewriters, which I learned to type on in the 80s. After reading that article, it certainly makes sense to me why the two spaces were initially used and why it went by the wayside. However, I take exception with a couple of things in that article:

"Because we've all switched to modern fonts, adding two spaces after a period no longer enhances readability, typographers say. It diminishes it."

It diminishes it how?

""If you get a really big pause—a big hole—in the middle of a line, the reader pauses. And you don't want people to pause all the time. You want the text to flow."

Now that is just absurd. Two spaces don't constitute "a big hole." No one pauses due to two spaces at between sentences.

So now that I know that the official rule is one space, I will try to make an effort to type by that rule.

Just like this is the first time I've ever heard of using one space.

I was taught to use two spaces when I learned how to type (on a typewriter) in high school.

Once I began to edit books, the typesetters told me that typeset material never uses two spaces. They asked me to remove the extra space from every file (Word and, before that, WordPerfect) before I sent it to them for typesetting. If I didn't, they would before they continued with typesetting it.

Since word processors these days are virtually typesetting programs with proportional fonts, I use one space all the time now. The only time I might consider making an exception would be if I were using a monospaced font. But really, even then, probably not.

Browsers ignore extra spaces or whitespace unless the html is specifically coded to add the extra spaces.

two looks better. Hence, I always try to rip the arms off of people who use just one.

And all that room.

2. What am I a farmer?

Courier New was where it was at. 12-20% boost right there.

As for spacing... 247 only allows one. So I'm going to guess that two is standard.

If you use anything other than one, you don't work in journalism. Print and broadcast script are the standards our society uses -- both use one line.

Two spaces and Oxford commas. What am I, a farmer?

Deux