This article in Slate looks at the most important issue of our time: Annoyance at people who insist on putting two spaces after every period.

Two-spacers are everywhere, their ugly error crossing every social boundary of class, education, and taste. You’d expect, for instance, that anyone savvy enough to read Slate would know the proper rules of typing, but you’d be wrong; every third e-mail I get from readers includes the two-space error. (In editing letters for “Dear Farhad,” my occasional tech-advice column, I’ve removed enough extra spaces to fill my forthcoming volume of melancholy epic poetry, The Emptiness Within.) The public relations profession is similarly ignorant; I’ve received press releases and correspondence from the biggest companies in the world that are riddled with extra spaces. Some of my best friends are irredeemable two spacers, too, and even my wife has been known to use an unnecessary extra space every now and then (though she points out that she does so only when writing to other two-spacers, just to make them happy).

When I learned how to type (on an electric typewriter—what up, Maine public school system?) I was a two-spacer, but as soon as I started writing for money, I learned to use one space at editorial request. It wasn’t that hard to do. Two spaces made sense for clarity in typewritten letters, but I think they’re unnecessary now. Still, as Edward Champion points out, writing a 1500-word essay on this is a pretty douchey thing to do.

14 replies on “. ? Or . ?”

  2. I’m an unrepentant two-spacer. Anything less is uncivilized.

    They’re FREE, you know. Go ahead and treat yourself to that visual break.

    And even so, I’d never complain that a single-spacer was ‘doing it wrong,’ like this douchey writer is. They’re both acceptable options – the only important thing is to stay consistent.

  3. Since HTML ignores the extra whitespace (unless you’re wrapping the text in PRE tags or something), we’re all single-spacers on the internet. Ah internet, the great equalizer.

    Personally, I’m a reformed double-spacer (it took a while) but I certainly don’t give a fuck if someone else wants to do it. There are far more important things to nitpick, like Random Capitalization, ending questions with periods, the lack of an easy way to make accent marks in Windows, the serial comma, or people who don’t use all caps in Good Morning News.

  4. The article is pretty dumb (hey look! wikileaks! look at me!!). But… two spaces is AWFUL. It is visually barbaric. I’m glad that sites like this one automatically fix you people’s spacing problems. You people!

  6. I’m an avid single spacer. Unfortunately, I edit a lot of coworkers work. I’ve built a macro in word that removes the extra space. Pretty easy work-around for me.

  7. I learned on an IBM Selectric in Junior High. If we didn’t double space after the end of our sentences it was an automatic fail for that assignment. Excuse me if my muscle memory hasn’t forgotten that.

  8. I only dig 2 or 3 space bar action if the word has a stop to it, a rest in time, that other grammatical tools can´t give it to it.

    Now, if your writing and making the thing look like a painting or a space structural architectural writing, go up ahead and use up to 8 space bar action. Will I get dizzy reading it, I dunno.

    But in general, it´s easier on the eye and more pleasing for me to read single space bar writing.
    But I guess people can always get creative if the medium in which they are proposing to do it to complies and functions within it.

  9. Oh, I encourage Random Capitalization if one knows what is Doing. So that means one would have to study a little bit about the subject and history of that Poetic Licence Tool. A small effort. Or it could just come to you reading about writers and stuff.

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