I’m normally a live and let live type, but not in this case – not when the sanctity of the typed word is at stake.
Double spacing after a period – if you don’t know it – is wrong. Horribly wrong.
Yet there are writers among us – including those who wear ties and uncomfortable shoes to work each day – that simply don’t know both practices are wrong, which is why I nodded vigorously when Slate’s Farhad Manjoo wrote a lengthy piece subtitled “Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.”
Because writers no longer have the word processors wars to distract them (“You WordStar people are all smug bastards“), a battle erupted over Manjoo’s single-spaced polemic about double-spaced typing (Manjoo’s article has attracted more than 2000 comments).
Predictably, the pro-double-spaced minority launching something of a grammatical jihad against the typographically correct:
I love you guys, but you’re crazy. On questions of aesthetic preference there’s no particular reason that normal people should listen to a bunch of geeky obsessives who spend orders of magnitude more time on these issues than average. It’s like how you probably shouldn’t listen to me when I tell you not to use .doc files or that you might want to consider a digital audio player with Ogg Vorbis support. I strongly believe those things, but even I know they’re pointless and arbitrary for everyone who doesn’t consider “Save As…” an opportunity for political action.
Nor should we assume that just because typographers believe earnestly in the single space that their belief is held entirely in good faith. They’re drunk on the awesome power of their proportional fonts, and sure of the cosmic import of the minuscule kerning decisions that it is their lonely duty to make. Of course they don’t want lowly typists exercising their opinions about letter spacing. Those people aren’t qualified to have opinions!
Even the Atlantic’s business and economics editor weighed in (“Let me just add: if you’re spending time worrying over whether my emails contain one or two spaces, you need to ask them to let you out of the asylum more often so you can pursue a more interesting hobby. I double space after sentences because I learned to type on a manual typewriter, and it’s not worth the effort to retrain myself. Even if typographers groan every time they open one of my missives.“)
Frankly, it’s good to see writers fighting (good naturedly) amongst themselves rather than communally hand-wringing over the vast surplus of writers and stunning lack of paying gigs – even if it’s over a practice that went out (typographically speaking) pretty much when typewriters did (How many of you still hit “Return” at the end of each line like you did when typing? Anyone?).
Hell, I miss the word processor wars.
And while this is nowhere as good, it’s not a bad way to kill 15 minutes on a Friday.
Keep writing (and single spacing), Tom Chandler.
OMG! I HATE it when I have to edit out double spaces after a period. Don’t do it people. Don’t hit the space bar twice.
Thank god for search & replace; clients send me double-spaced text all the time.
Still, I’m a superior human being, so I forgive them.
Well, once again you’ve missed a great opportunity, Tom. Instead, you spent all your time talking about a completely dead issue. Deader than Latin…
Tell me, why didn’t you spend your energy somewhere more productive, like railing against the misuse of ellipses on the Web? Bashing on those of us who learned to type using manual typewriters is just plain mean. (Not to mention, wrong.) I learned to use two spaces under
an old battleaxe who ate Master Sergeants for luncha lady who glowered as she walked the aisles between us neophytes, and would give a resounding WHACK! to anyone so impertinent as to use only one space after a period.I’ve still got the scars to prove it.
Having earned those scars the hard way, it would give me (even worse) nightmares to attempt to give up my beloved double-space. It’s not habit; it’s more at the level of genetic programming.
You wouldn’t want THAT on your conscience now, would you…
No, it’s really more fun than mean. Would it help you to walk the typographically righteous path if I hovered over you and whacked your hands whenever you typed two spaces?
The things I’ll do to better mankind…
Usually, when new technology comes traipsing along, things like this get eradicated right quick. Yet for some reason this little typewriter habit seems to endure like cockroaches in a Twinkie factory.
As far as I know, this is the last hold out of that clickity-clack, bygone age. If that’s the case, does that mean (wait for it…) double-space is the final frontier?
(It had to be said, and it might as well be said by me.)
~Graham
I never quite understood the “I learned this way” reasoning, being as writers no longer hit the “Return” at the end of each line (ding!).
And I appreciate you taking the heat for the pun. I wouldn’t have done it, but I’ve got to maintain the illusion of omnipotence.