How many papers, articles, newsletters, or emails have you wrote to someone throughout your lifetime? Quickly, I want you to think about the formatting that you may have used. Most of you can recall without having to pull up some past writings, but if you need to quickly... look! Now, when you look at your writing, pay attention specifically to your spacing.
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I have written many papers throughout my high school and college career and never have I ever thought about the correct way to "space" after a period, until recently.
During my student teaching, I took on all major responsibilities of the teacher, such as writing the newsletters. I was given the templates or on occasion, the copy from the previous year. These old newsletters provided me with insight on how they should be formulated, what is to be expected in a typical newsletter, and all that jazz. When I pulled up the word document on my computer, I was rather puzzled. All I could see were what it appeared to be as "gaps" and "holes" in the letter. I didn't understand.
A couple weeks went by and I started to do some research on this particular topic. I asked my fellow friends and loved ones their thoughts on this matter of opinion and generated some facts. I was probing them with questions such as "which is the correct way to generate a letter...one space after a period, or two" and "which do you prefer, one space after a period or two". It was quite interesting to see how certain people responded to these questions and how they all fit together.
My findings informed me that most people 35 and older believed (and) preferred that double spacing was the proper way. Vice Versa for those under 30.
So what is really correct?
Here's my four-one-one
typeface: an interpretation of characters; the way a type(font) looks
Back when typewriters were a hot commodity, monospaced typefaces were utilized, as typewriters could only move forward on standard space per letter. Monospaced is when all the letters take up the same amount of space on a page. For example: the letter "w" in monospaced font will take up the same amount of space as the letter "i". When you give all letters the same amount of space, it can be difficult to detect where one sentence ends and a new one beings at times.
See illustration below for an example.
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Now-a-days, most all widely used fonts (in the professional world) are proportionally-spaced typefaces, giving one space after each period sufficient visual cues for separating sentences.
In all, the accurate, tride and true, professional and accurate way to space, is single spacing according to most all of the data I have found; however, this long standing debate still carries on and seems to more specifically come down to a matter of preference.
So which do you prefer?
SINGLE SPACED
DOUBLE SPACED
As I continued to teach in my assigning district, I brought up this very same topic. Their response; "Oh my, double space after the period! The principal would NOT accept single spaces!"
My question is this
When misconceptions of correct grammar and sentence formation are lingering and have yet to provide a solid, concrete answer... what do you do?
What is your opinion?
...after all, isn't everything in our world based on a matter of opinion.
3 comments:
Oh my gosh, thank you for posting this! My boyfriend double spaces and it drives me nuts. I learned single spacing, he learned double spacing. I am totally going to show this to him, because I've tried to figure out which is right, even though it seems to be more of a matter of opinion. My parents both double space too!
I was always taught in high school english classes to use 2 spaces, so have been doing it ever since. Even on the internet (such as blogging) I'll frequently use 2. Interesting to think about!
Pretty sure I was taught to double space back when learning typing in grade school. Butim a single spacer. Greta post! I never knew that.
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