Does anyone still use two spaces after a period?

In highschool I was originally taught to use two spaces after a period. I’m not sure if it was still conventional at the time or if my teacher was just old-school. But what has helped wean me away from that practice is being a web developer, when you’re typing content for html documents only one space shows up in your document regardless of how many you type unless you manually insert more using html entities.

a) whitespace rivers are about the most annoying visual gaffaw in any large block of text. Any graphic artist I’ve ever run into has near violent OCD about it, and b) why do people continually choose to work against the grain – that is: acting contrary to accepted standards and widely-adopted best practices of web copywriting?

Just my .02.

I learned in my high school typing class (1992ish?) the use of 2 spaces after a period. I now live in Europe (Germany to be exact) and it took me ages to get away from the double space after the period, as they didn’t use it here anyway. I still catch myself doing it now and again, but as in most WYSIWIG editors (I am a Dreamweaver user myself) it automatically gets deleted, it usually doesn’t pose a problem anymore.

Yes, I still use 2 spaces. I always use some extra NBSP to get the effect. I learned to do this in typing class and still prefer the visual break, even in proportional fonts. I also try to make use of M-dash and N-dash to get different looks.

I get amused over how much web-designers will kill to get rounded corners and let the text go willy-nilly. They’ll except badly wrapped text as long as they get gradients and drop shadows.

Change is measured in pain.

I don’t care if you talk about improving a relationship, getting over a bad one – or accommodating a rule change.

Back in typing class with the IBM Selectric something still years down the road – a period and colon got two spaces.

MS Word was frustrating, the first version that started collapsing mulitple spaces (I think it still fit on two 5 1/4 inch floppies. But the rules we used back then were company standard – and two spaces it was.

Consider how long “best practice” accommodated non-standard browsers, such as NetScape and IE non-standard behaviors. Depending on your audience, there was a space of several years, where you could assume a “current browser” vistor community – and where you had to be aware that more than half of your visitors and intended audience still use Windows 95 and a really old version of Internet Explorer (like one customer I have today).

So the reason for using two spaces, to me, is a function of knowing and acknowledging people that learned the old rule, but may never have run against the change or anything that clearly explained that the rule change, and why. The formal change of the two-space rule is documented among professionals. I am not convinced that much of the general reading public is aware that the change is intentional – or why.

For those that “grew up” knowing the two space rule – how many people have been distracted because the single space rule is less readable – according to the rule they learned – and impinges on being able to communicate with, ahem, visitors with “earlier experience”, shall we say?

If your target audience learned to read since 1995 I would imagine you can assume they have seen both rules in use, and are comfortable with single spaces after the dot. It might be presumptuous, and make you look ignorant, to some of your audience that learned to read before 1985.

Brad K.
(Reading “Hardy Boys” in 1961)

I don’t ensure my web sites work in IE4 or Mosaic anymore, even though I see those user agents show up in my logs. Likewise, I also don’t adhere to ancient and since abandoned copywriting style guides that cause more work and (arguably, I know) less screen legibility. Regardless of whether it’s a stylistic “nod” to the “oldtimers” or not. Time to move on.

I’m an old-timer, but from the printing trade. 99% of the time we did “not” use mono-spaced fonts, unless we were attempting to replicate a typewritten letter. Never, never did we use double spaces after periods, colons, semi’s or any other punctuation. That was for girls, just kidding Jennifer. But, it was true in the hot metal days (pre-computers), the ladies did the typing in the offices and the guys typed or set type for hot metal printing.

I grew up with the two spaces after the end of sentences before most of you were conceived.

When reading–especially aloud for an audience, which I did as a rip-and-read radio newscaster–the double spaces were a very helpful visual that helped with producing the proper emphases and tonalities for audial communication.

Academia has since purged the second space from my writing.

I suppose that if I find a portion of my Web audience prefers and feels strongly about the double spaces, I will make sure to include them unless it offends another large portion of my audience. Flaunting my arrogance in my visitors’ faces drives them away and pleasing them brings them back. Thus, I opt to please and retain my visitors.

This may be a little off topic, but I keep an old Royal typewriter in my office. One day I was taking a group of highschoolers on a tour through our department and on a whim began explaining where a lot of the terms they are familiar with originated. They thought it was pretty cool, especially the carriage return. But the best part was when I dinged the bell. Every one of their eyes brightened when they heard it.

FYI, I’m old school. It’s been two spaces a LOT longer than it’s been one space. It looks cleaner and is more elegant. It’s the difference between a finely aged wine and a soda. :O)

It’s funny to see Wardell’s comment while in school I was taught to use one space after a period.

So, to answer the question, what I’ve learned is what I still apply, one space after a period.

I too was trained to type on a manual then electric typewriter – Olivettis were a favourite at school, and the two spaces was definitely a convention/std. These days, definitely not, and I do remember it being brought up in the office recently and most of the under 30 year olds who work here having no clue. Time to move on!

@Karen

Are you saying it is time for the undereducated and less knowledgeable kiddies to move on into a broader knowledgebase and a greater understanding of the world around them; or are you saying we older adults should move on into death and leave the world poorer without the benefit of our knowledge, expertise, and contributions?

@James: While I do agree that I wasn’t sure who Karen wanted to move on, I didn’t read anything about her suggesting that older adults should “move on into death”. That seems like a deliberately provocative misinterpretation of what she wrote.

I learned 2 spaces when learning to type also. When I started doing manual for my company I learned the one space after a period. It did take some getting used to but now it is such a habit that I do it with everything.

“Does anyone still use two spaces after a period?” Yes, I do.

The reasoning in use here is absolutely ridiculous. People are trying to say that a proportionally spaced period followed by one space provides the same readability as a mono spaced period followed by two spaces. What planet do these people live on?

A mono spaced period followed by one space provides MORE readability than the proportionally spaced period followed by one space so how could the two space version be LESS readable?

Graphic artists should stick to art, which paragraphs are not. I don’t care how the paragraph looks from a distance, I care how it flows when I read it. Why would we change the rules for readability based on something that has nothing to do with readability?

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.