Still Taught Today
- I don't remember being taught that in school (my younger days), however; I had to take an English class last year to finish my degree. The instructor for that class, last year, insisted on the two spaces. I have to agree that it looks better and I use nbsp's to make them happen. On the other hand, I've always liked the "whitespace rivers" that Chris finds annoying.
- —Guest John M
I still use 2 spaces and would prefer to
- I was disappointed to find out that dreamweaver will not automatically allow double spacing and I would have to force it - It makes sentences much more easy to read. This was learned in high school and I am not sure why it is not acknowledged or used more often.
- —Guest Amanda
Typing VS. Typography
- I have been an art director now for 31 years and never, ever knew it to be acceptable to use two spaces in graphic design. It is somewhat common in data processing and typing but that is not typography. Web design should incorporate proper use of spaces as does print design.
- —Guest Tony
Why is old convention bad?
- Why is it that something learned pre-1990 is bad? How did the early web designers even decide that only one space was needed after a period? I still use 2 spaces in my typing - I find it easier to read, and it's what I was taught in high-school typing class. My pet peeve now is the lack of capitalization and punctuation my kids have "learned" from saving keystrokes while texting. They do it in emails, too and I find it very difficult to read. I'm afraid they'll not learn to "write" like professional people.
- —Guest Ginger
Word
- Word 2007 and Word 2010 both follow 2 space after perios convention.
- —Guest frj11
Old School is Best School
- There is only one right way and that is 2 spaces. In pages I build, 2 spaces. In my php emails, 2 spaces. In this response, 2 spaces. The space between my ears, 2 many spaces... It's about the customer and the customer likes readability and readability requires 2 spaces after the period. I always go back through my sites and add because it's the right thing to do. That's where I'm at with it.
- —DAB_ill_Do_Ya
force of habit
- i got slated recently by my marketing team for still using 2 spaces after fullstop(period)... i was not amused.
- —Guest Sudonim
It's about readability
- I use double spaces when I'm certain the text will be displayed in monospace font. In proportional fonts, no; it just looks wrong.
- —Guest Cynth
Time to move on.
- 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.
- —Guest Chris
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, and 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,
- —Guest Brad K.
I use 2 spaces
- 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.
- —Guest Dwight Blubaugh
Learned in High School
- 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. :-)
- —Guest Jeff
Whitespace rivers are annoying
- 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.
- —Guest Chris
Learned it in High School
- 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.
- —Guest Wardell
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