One Space/Two Spaces After Period?

[Betty Kelly]

Well, all my life I have been inserting two spaces after a period. I learned to type this way back in the old days. I've just come to learn that one space after a period is the standard today, mainly because of proportional fonts in computer-generated documents. Look at any magazine article or web page. I guess I never even noticed the change to one space after a period.

My question is: Has the standard changed in legal transcripts also? Does anyone know what's right, or does every court/agency have their own standard these days?

Thanks,
Betty

[Betty Kelly]

It's Betty again, following up my own post. I just noticed that this website has automatically changed my punctuation in above post to make it one space after each period -- even though I typed it as two spaces.

[Sue Ohmer]

Betty,

As a former reporter and scopist/proofreader, I'm sorry I'm from the old school, two spaces after a period. I've also noticed no one does two spaces between the state and zip code. That's what I was taught. When I proofread, I always make sure there's two spaces after a period. That's my two cents.

Thanks,

Sue

[Kyung]

I always do two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence. Two spaces after colons.

[Betty Kelly]

I like two spaces also, but it's funny to read all the replies saying they want two spaces after periods -- but then when we read the posts, they ALL have one space after the periods. It just automatically comes out that way, I guess. I don't think you can find a magazine or newspaper article anymore with two spaces after periods. But it's hard to type differently!

[Jennie Ann]

My daughter asked me if I could retype a one-and-a-half page thingie for her nursing course. She works full time and goes to school full time, and so I obliged.

I did not change the words, but I did notice one space after every period. I decided to correct it for her, making it two spaces after the period instead of one space.

When she came to get it, she said, "Oh, no, that's wrong." I explained to her the two spaces after the period, and she said that in her college, the professor has instructed them to only use one space after the period. So that is how she does it.

On my transcripts, ALL of my transcripts, it will always be two spaces. LOL

That said, when I pull up a document in Microsoft Word, I do notice that sometimes when the two spaces fall at the end of a line, the first space will be at the end of a line and the second space will be at the beginning of the next line.

So, when proofing my Word-formatted transcripts, if this happens with the first space at the end of a line and the second space at the beginning of the next line, I will remove the second space, to make the document flush left. I think that may be one reason for going to one space after periods, but I'd rather fight that switch. ;>)

[Rebecca Blasco]

My husband is a web designer, and the web design software that's out there ONLY allows for one space after a full stop, even though the grammatically correct is two spaces at the end of a sentence. It could be that because of the language of the internet, the binary codes, whatever, only recognizes one space and so then puts them in automatically. I see this all over the internet and sites like facebook and whatnot, but I do believe that is because the guys that design software are math guys and not English guys, which is why they wouldn't know that it's always two spaces after a full stop or question mark.

[Betty Kelly]

Well, that's very interesting. Thanks for adding that perspective! Is that also the reason that magazines and newspapers have switched to one space after periods? I have to admit that I didn't even realize this was going on till just the other day.

[Glen Warner]

Hi, Rebecca.

It's not exactly that web designers don't know that there's supposed to be two spaces after a period; it's just that when they type that extra space, the HTML editor ignores it.

In order to get that extra space in, the web designer would have to type in & nbsp; (all squished together).

In practice, it would look something like this:   (Hopefully this will show up as two spaces!)

So, if you want two spaces here, try adding that symbol appropriately.

As for why magazines and newspapers have switched, I dunno ....!

--gdw
-----------------------
"For a Good (steno) Time ...."
http://www.cheapandsleazy.net

[Rebecca Blasco]

Hey, Glen,

Yeah, having done some code writing for my hubby, I know that about the symbol for the extra space. It totally drives me crazy that you can't just add it, but programmers are generally math guys and probably don't know about the two space rule.

That's the funny thing about math versus English. If you're a math person, typically grammar escapes you, and vice versa. I'm a word girl. If a baddy came up and said, "Square root of 9 or your life," I'd be pretty much screwed. . .

[Tami]

Is this Betty Kelly from California who went to the same "Old School" as me??

I hope so!!


If it is . . . Hi, BETTY!!! It's Tami!

[Marge Teilhaber (TILE hobber)]

I don't care that it's au courant to use 1 space after a period at end of sentence. I don't like it and think it makes it too crowded. I do 2 spaces after end-of-sentence punctuation and of course after a colon.

[Betty Kelly]

I agree. It was very disconcerting to realize that the venerable Chicago Manual of Style has officially switched to one space after a period.