Snow White's stitching up the circuitboards

[impersona]

I am really, seriously horrified and overwhelmed right now.   I had absolutely no idea that now it is standard and proper to only use one space after sentence periods now, instead of double-spacing.  I have no idea how that knowledge completely missed me over the past twenty-some years, especially since I take so much pride in writing on the Interwebs.  

I'm sorry that you've all had to look at my horrible, hideous spacing habits up until now.  Single-spacing still looks really weird and wrong to me and it will take me a while to break from my ways.

And just to clarify, yes, I'm completely serious about how shocked I am.  I heard about the modern spacing conventions while at a meeting at work and went BUH and everyone was like "well, duh?".  Everybody being at least 10 years older than me too, and surprised that a youngin' like me wasn't taught about single-spacing at school.

Stupid single spacing.  I get it, it's just that the conventions of spacing absolutely never, ever crossed my mind before.  Double-space after periods.  The end.

MY WORLD IS UNDONE 

Comments

[thez]

Eh, I still double space in word documents because I think it does look a little clearer. I had not heard of this new single spacing convention either, though I wonder how much the internet has influenced that what with various forum and journaling software that defaults to single spaces unless you specifically use nbsp; or because of alignment issues (on the forums I always single space because double spacing occasionally creates weird unnecessary indents).

[ru]

Wait WHAT. WHAT.

First off, don't feel bad, because I had no idea until I read your post just now. And having said that, I'm kind of FLABBERGASTED. I THINK YOU'RE RIGHT, THE WORLD IS COMING APART. HOLD ME. D:

What I want to know is who thought this was a good idea. I mean, it's kinda helpful denoting where one sentence ends and another begins. Heck, it was drilled into me when I took typing in 6th grade. Is this another one of those things, like cursive, where it's simply becoming obsolete? And again, why?

On that note, you may be comforted to know that double spacing is still alive and well in academia. <3 My advisor was thorough enough that he once caught when I accidentally single spaced between two sentences so that I could correct it.

And I'm gonna go ahead and admit right now that I'm kinda a fuddyduddy, and until I have a good reason otherwise, I'm going to laugh in the face of convention and continue to double space my sentences. Putting only a single space between sentences seems wrong to me. There's NOT. ENOUGH. ROOM.

Wow, this kinda turned into a mini-rant. XD

[thez]

Which is hilarious because this entire comment you just posted appears as single-spaced anyway because of the aforementioned journal defaults. :D

[ru]

Good grief, SNAP. The fact that I didn't notice that before now kinda renders some of my argument moot, too. XD;;;

[caltastic]

It's actually not just a journal thing, it's HTML as a whole. The conventions of the language will (and have always) compressed multiple spaces into a single space, because programming languages are wonky that way.

With that being said, I have and will always use two spaces at the end of a sentence, and anyone who tells me not to can go stick that extra space right up their ass. XD

[thez]

I was actually kind of curious about that! In Sage's style it all comes out single-spaced, but in my journal style I could swear her post appears double-spaced.

I R LEARNING

[caltastic]

It is possible that your style grabs double spaces specifically and then replaces them with the HTML entity instead, which would preserve them. It's pretty hit-or-miss with editors. XD

[thez]

THANK YOU I was hoping you'd explain it, because my working theory was "magic".

[impersona]

OKAY THAT CURSIVE THING MAKES ME ANTI-HAPPY TOO.

Yeah, in college I never ran into a problem with the spacing in reports and such either. To come across the knowledge in a marketing job like 3 years later was a bit of a surprise to me XD

[industrialfairytale]

I will always be bitter about cursive. Always. I write my checks in it just because I learned it damn it.

[prodigy]

Speaking from experience with AP style, MLA style, and ABA conventions, it's not really that ironclad -- a few official stylebooks have switched over to single-spacing, but in terms of what's likely to actually come off as professional in writing, it varies widely based on the context, industry, region, and country. No such thing as objective language, after all. So rest easy, you're far from the only person schooled primarily in the order of the double-space.

[sporky_rat]

I was always taught double space and I learned on a typewriter, so take that with a grain of salt.

[impersona]

Well, according to trusted sources like Wikipedia, it is because we've moved away from the typewriter that single-spacing is becoming more common. With typewriters, inconsistencies in spacing made it so that you needed to have the double-space just in case, or you risk letters jamming together and shit. With computers, that shit automatically is spaced a certain distance apart. So it's because of the automation that people say we don't need the double anymore.

But I do anyways.

[charis]

... this is news to me as well. I think it would be news to my entire workplace -- not that most of my coworkers are particularly grammatically savvy ... nor even comprehensible sometimes. >_>

Screw it; I'll stick to two spaces. I've been doing it for so long that until I am Officially Informed of it as Fact, I'll stick with how I autopilot.

[flytastic]

ALL UR EXTRA SPACES ARE BELONG TO US ME!!!!

I shall remove them all! MUAHAHAHAHAHA