"TOTALLY, COMPLETELY, UTTERLY, AND INARGUABLY WRONG": Slate's Farhad Manjoo implores you to type only one space after each period. He explains that now that the world is all proportional fonts instead of monospaced fonts, "adding two spaces after a period no longer enhances readability ... It diminishes it."
added: We ran a poll all week: two spaces won out, 62% - 37%.
He can have my extra space when he prys it from my cold dead keyboard.
ReplyDeleteAnd leaving only one space in means the sentences look like they're running together. See, I can make unreasonable arguments too. (Really, they think a single space makes sentences look better and that's an absolute argument?)
ReplyDeleteWhile I understand his argument (that you don't need two spaces because we don't use typewriters anymore), two spaces is automatic for me thanks to the touch typing class we were required to take my freshman year of high school. I sometimes do a find and replace to remove the double spaces, but inevitably the partners for whom I work ask to put them back in the document.
ReplyDeleteActually, it's not all that strange. I've been trained to do single-space since I was in high school journalism. That's when I was taught that journalists use one space, if writing for English, use two spaces. Although I never really understood why.
ReplyDeleteFor all the reasons he hates the double space, I hate the single space. In my humble opinion, Mr. Manjoo is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong!
ReplyDeleteThis was discussed on Twitter yesterday--Jane Espenson took the "two is appropriate" position, and we learned that at least some TV shows have instituted "one space" rules for scripts. My view on two spaces is likewise that it is simply, inalterably, and utterly correct.
ReplyDeleteActually, it's not all that strange. I've been trained to do single-space since I was in high school journalism. That's when I was taught that journalists use one space, if writing for English, use two spaces. Although I never really understood why.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I posted ths link on Facebook with my own comments and FB automatically changed my double spaces to single spaces when publishing. Not cool, Zuckerberg. Not cool.
ReplyDelete<span>Some news production software has also adopted the one space rule, which is very annoying, because the software will feed directly into the prompter, and get all confused when it sees two spaces. It won't flag them or anything, so you can go in and correct them. It'll just stop dead in the middle of a show. Which is clearly the best time.</span>
ReplyDeleteI actually do search and replace when I get draft briefs from others at my firm to take out all the horrible extra spaces.
ReplyDeleteHe'll never take bluebooking from me.
ReplyDeleteNormally this kind of thing is right up my alley: flying in the face of common knowledge/usage and being able to explain the historic precedent. Yet I'm not sure I can make the switch to single-spacing.
ReplyDeleteFirst, Farhad Manjoo is a liar. The University of Chicago Manual of Style does not say to use a single space in all circumstances. The copyeditor who writes the CMOS Online blog likes a single space. She also says, however, that the view at CMOS is that "there is no reason" for two spaces in "published work" (her emphasis), but that her colleagues at CMOS actually prefer two spaces in their "personal correspondence and notes." I don't have CMOS in front of me, so I don't know whether it's accurate to say that it "prescribes" single space or simply leaves it up to the copyeditor, noting that a second space is unnecessary. And is this comment "published work"? I don't know. If it counts as personal correspondence, though, it sounds like the consensus among the good folks at CMOS is that I should keep using that second space. If this seems like an excessively pedantic parsing of CMOS Online, let me remind you that we are having an argument about the appropriate number of spaces after a period, so no shit it's pedantic.
ReplyDeleteSecond, one good reason for the second period in the kind of writing I do for a living (legal briefs) is that people are used to it. That sounds like an argument that Manjoo would hate, but look: I write for judges, not typesetters. If 75% of the judges reading my briefs think that one space looks weird, for damn sure I'm going to go with two spaces.
And by the way, I think one space looks wrong, and I hate Blogger for automatically converting two spaces to single spaces when it publishes. Though at least Blogger and Facebook have a reason for it. There's a legitimate argument that the accumulation of extra spaces for them results in a non-trivial storage charge, like the fractional cents in Office Space.
One space!
ReplyDeleteTwo spaces. Anything else is inexcusable. But this doesn't even make the top ten list of regrettable grammar/typing errors the kids are making these days. I'll just settle for a brief from a junior associate that doesn't put the period outside the quotation marks.
ReplyDeleteAt this point for me, it's muscle memory. I couldn't stop my two-space habit if I tried.
ReplyDeleteOne space! I'm with Roger - a search and replace is among the first things I do when a manuscript comes in.
ReplyDeleteI have posted a poll. Also, if anyone knows how to strip the HTML code which makes the date headers and section headers so weird-looking, let me know.
ReplyDeleteHe was doing so well when he was explaining actual reasons that one way is better than the other -- whether right or wrong, at least he had reasons -- and then he blew with the stuff about "shoppe", where he went on to argue thatall arbitrary rules are right! Because they all have good non-arbitrary reasons! Horseshit.
ReplyDeletenevermind on #2. Figured it out.
ReplyDeleteAfter years of arguing for two spaces, I have now retrained my muscle memory to type one. But the only reason is that I can do a find and replace to make all of the instances of two spaces become one space and doing that find/replace in reverse would seriously screw up my documents. I guess more than one or two spaces, I'm concerned with consistency.
ReplyDeleteOh, and the bluebook sucks.
ReplyDeleteFun fact - when typing text into your iphone, simply typing two spaces in a row is autocorrected to ". "
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure I use single space. I've never really thought about it, as the particular language I usually write involves esoteric symbols rather than actual English words, and is largely peopled by writers who don't know an em dash from an ellipsis.
That's an error? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quotation_mark#Punctuation
ReplyDeleteI'm a pragmatist on this point. I want my docs to look clean and read smoothly. Subjectively, I find docs read more smoothly with two spaces after a period.
ReplyDeleteI'm not dogmatic. If a judge (or a supervisor) expressed a preference for single spaces, I could conform. Heck, I once had a supervisor who would woodshed people for failing to put a double-space after colons or between the city and the zip code in an address. He lived to tell about it and so did I. It wasn't even a near thing. What almost got him killed were his dogmatic and illogical (though highly conventional) views about punctuation and quotation marks.
Left to my own devices though, I'll drop a double-space every time.
Speaking of which, Spacewoman, we really need to have the spacechildren over to my grandfather's print shop (now in my Dad's garage) to do some letterpress. I mentioned this to Isaac a few years ago but never followed up. This summer mayhap?
ReplyDeleteTo paraphrase The Onion, F*** It -- We're going to no spaces!"Why bother with any spaces at all?It just wastes room, right?Plus, no spaces just looks cooler.It also stops me from taking a pause between sentences.So maybe I'll read faster!I'm loving the no space rule.
ReplyDeleteI dreaded reading the comments to this post, because I think this argument is so damn maddening; thank god there's a majority agreement here. Just because it is efficient for publishing does not make it BETTER. Two spaces have the same closing effect as the capital letter at the beginning of a sentence.
ReplyDeleteMaybe we should just all go to five spaces. After all, if two spaces indicates a pause, why not make the pause even clearer? This is wonderful. I think I'm going to start using it in all my documents.
ReplyDeleteThis is where someone needs to find the Monty Python video of Michael Palin as the news announcer who indicates that he's just pausing at the end of a sentence with a special hand gesture.
ReplyDeleteI tend to use two for all of the reasons mentioned above. But if I'm running over a maximum page limit and it isn't a legal brief, I'm not above sneaking a few one-spacers or running search/replace on ". " as a quick way to cut things down to the required size.
ReplyDeleteWhat would Victor Borge say about this?
ReplyDeleteI spent good money on my community college English Composition credits, and I am NOT about to turn my back on them now.
ReplyDelete<span>Unless there was a period in the quotated material, why would the period go inside the quotation marks? As a recovering philosophy major, insistence on this convention just kills me. Thanks Roger, for the link to the wiki article. It's nice to know I'm anglophillic about something.</span>
ReplyDeleteJose Saramago, in reply: "Yeah, that's nice. Come back to me when you get rid of paragraphs. Then we'll talk."
ReplyDeleteMost of the stuff I write these days is for printing in our alumni magazine, so I use one space after a period. Two spaces doesn't look right in that format. But seriously - this is not something to get all pedantic about.
ReplyDeleteNow the serial comma - THAT is something to get pedantic about.
rather than "published" work, perhaps sub in "typeset" work. I'm an editor, and though they WILL NOT EVER get me to stop typing two spaces after a period, our design team and typesetters have to remove the double spaces from every single manuscript, piece of copy, etc., when they are setting it. I know it's the bane of many a copyeditor's existence, and we routinely get cursed out by designers for it.
ReplyDeleteAlso, there is no such thing as excessively pedantic parsing in the world of copyediting. Ever.
As a graphic designer with 14 years of experience and an expertise and passion for typography, I can tell you that we unequivocally take out every one of your double spaces every single time.
ReplyDeleteMind...blown! I'm in publishing, which is probably why I've long assumed that two-spacers were either being charmingly anachronistic (grrrr...) or just didn't know that modern fonts make the second space obsolete.
ReplyDeleteForget the spacechildren, I'm coming over myself. You supply the type, I supply the beer?
ReplyDeleteSerial comma: YES. That's one where it actually gets confusing if you don't use it. Two spaces vs. one: no confusion. Failure to use serial comma: confusing.
ReplyDeleteWhat's your position on the serial comma?
ReplyDeleteAs a person with 25 years of experience typing, I can tell you that I unequivocally do not submit my emails to graphic designers before sending them to my friends.
ReplyDeleteInteresting to see that as a one-spacer, I'm in the distinct minority here. But then, I didn't really pay attention in typing class and only learned to touch-type by just using the computer, rather than the instruction.
ReplyDeleteTwo spaces! Always and forever two. I think having just one looks odd, and I don't think it facilitates my reading experience at all.
ReplyDeleteThe only exception I would make is if the screenwriting format gods declared that everyone in Hollywood now wants to see single spaces. I would have to switch then, because readers are picky about formatting; but even then, I would switch for screenplays only and stick with two for my personal correspondence.
Type two spaces or one space in your personal correspondence. I don't care. I type two out of habit.
ReplyDeleteBut if you're making a web page, or typing something in Word that you expect me to turn into a web page? I will break your fingers if you don't learn how to use the space bar properly. It is for putting one (or two) spaces after periods. I can fix that easily enough if my web editing program doesn't do it automatically. The space bar is NOT for: creating tabs, creating columns, creating indented lists, or FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THIS IS HOLY creating tables. " " drives me to drink some days.
Does anybody else still have to put up with the really old school typists who use their return/enter key at the end of each line? I learned how to type on a typewriter too, so I get it, but it's wildly inefficient to be hitting that key so many times when the word processing programs (which, by a conservative estimate, we've all had access to for about 20 years now) will do it for you.
The comment form keeps understanding my html - what that should say is that en bee ess pee semicolon drives me to drink some days.
ReplyDeleteThis is the main reason I don't listen to Vampire Weekend.
ReplyDeleteFirmly in the YES column on serial commas, for the reason Isaac notes. And it looks nicer.
ReplyDeleteen bee ess pee what the heck?
ReplyDeleteAnd please, please, please do not use tabs to indent every line of an indented paragraph or block quote. Word has a button to do that easily that does not require deleting and re-creating the spacing any time you change some words in the indented paragraph.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space
ReplyDeleteI can't type it here without it rendering as a space in the published comment. And I should have said, "ampersand en bee ess pee semicolon"
Oh, I'm glad. I was afraid we were going to have a serial comma throwdown. I am firmly in favor as well (though there are instances where using it is also confusing: To my mother, Ayn Rand, and God, eg. Is Ayn Rand the mother or another dedicatee?).
ReplyDeleteSee, now we have to talk about parentheses, and probaby brackets. [To my mother (Ayn Rand), the Koch brothers, and God.]
ReplyDeleteI frequently have to edit documents that have used tabs rather than hard returns to create new paragraphs--5 page settlement agreement without a single hard return. Really annoying.
ReplyDeleteAll in due time. We can have throwdowns next week on quote punctuation, serial commas and "parentheses versus brackets".
ReplyDeleteBrackets indicate that the interval includes the endpoints; parentheses indicate that the endpoints are not part of the interval. This is convention, no argument is necessary.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, Coppola could give two shakes about the right margin:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/01/we-will-never-get-past-viet-nam-if-we.html
(And reminds me why when I used to type letters on a typewriter, I often used 1 1/2 line spacing. Single spacing looks so hard to read to me.)
The Judge John Hodgman podcast just did an episode on the use of parentheses in fiction (complainant -- pro-parentheses -- had publishing background, respondent-boyfriend was a computer programmer). Good stuff, as is the podcast in general.
ReplyDeleteMust add "Serial Comma Throwdown" to list of potential band names.
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I say to every young associate, no, <span>every</span> young associate with whom I am working, before they ever submit any written work to me (so that they know that this isn't just a mean criticism) is that it is in their best interest to learn to use Word formatting codes immediately. I always, no, <span>always</span> say to them, in roughly these words, that they may think that this is overly pedantic or obsessive or that they can do it later, but that the first time that anyone senior to them has to spend time at 2:00 in the morning reformatting because they've used hard tabs, or retyping a list because they've used hard numbering, or changing header formatting one-by-one because they haven't used the header codes, they are going to make somebody <span>very mad</span>, and that person is never going to forget it, and that person is going to be <span>very mean</span> when reviews come around. So it may sound stupid and pedantic and obsessive, but if you think that properly formatting a brief, memo, letter, or agreement is beneath you and instead is a job for the people senior to you, you are asking for a short and unhappy career.
ReplyDelete"I write for judges, not typesetters." Well, I hope if you write for the Seventh Circuit, you only single-space, because that's what they prefer.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not crazy wild about underlining and emphasizing things, but here I'm just trying to get you to understand how I deliver this talk.
ReplyDeleteI would like to say that this thread is one of the many reasons that I love this blog.
ReplyDeleteYou mean, "before he or she ever submits any written work," etc., because a day of reckoning falls upon any associate who hands me any writing which confuses the singular with the plural and tries to avoid gender issues with false pluralization.<span> </span>
ReplyDeleteDone and done. The motor on the press doesn't work other than at full speed (a motor which is at least sixty years old), but we'd not be working in volume anyway, so hand-cranking it isn't a problem. I need to go put some type back one of these days and do some other organizing. Let's figure out a date and come over and I'll show you around.
ReplyDeleteAs long as no one fucks with my m-dash <span>&mdash and I mean it </span><span>&mdash </span>I'll stay out of it.
ReplyDelete<span></span>
Adam, you and I are out on a limb with our period/quotation mark placement. But keep the faith!
ReplyDeleteYou should see how I grade papers. Never mind the ones who confuse "since" with "because" and "less" with "fewer" - those drive me crazy, but at least those are high school level errors. I would be happy if they would just internalize that sentences need verbs, and that those verbs need to agree with their subjects. It would also help if they didn't keep switching tenses throughout the paper.
ReplyDeleteShall we add to the throwdown list whether em-dashes and en-dashes get spaces before and after them?
ReplyDeleteI live in a word that has sentences, and those sentences need to be populated with verbs. Who's gonna do it? You? You Dean Marsha? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for your students and curse Strunk and Wright. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That the proper placement of a verb, while occasionally implied, probably saved a moment's confusion. And proper verb usage while grotesque and incomprehsable to you, avoids confusion.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could like this twice because this is a huge pet peeve of mine.
ReplyDeleteAlso, when I'm managing my own staff, I'm going to have to incorporate Isaac's language on the theme of "this is your job, not mine." Excellent wording.
I know--I just muttered to myself, "God, I love this blog."
ReplyDeleteWhat percent chance is there that that was not written by Posner or Easterbrook? Zero? Or zero-point-zero?
ReplyDeleteFair enough, Adam, but in my defense it's a mistake (like many mistakes) that I would correct in editing before circulating or filing.
ReplyDeleteFair enough, Adam, but in my defense it's a mistake (like many others) that I often make in speech or informal writing but that I would correct in editing anything more formal. I'm not too careful here.
ReplyDeleteMarsha -- I believe we have had the debate here about the use of "since" to mean "because," and we established that it has been accepted usage for several hundred years. My recollection is that the resistance to that usage is of more recent vintage.
Error. Wikipedia be damned.
ReplyDeleteYes!!
ReplyDeleteI don't even mark "since" and "because" - I know that's my personal bugaboo and that the world has simply chosen to diverge from the proper path. Less/fewer makes me crazy, but, again, if they would just put both subjects and verbs in sentences, I might cut them a little slack.
ReplyDeleteWhat I've learned from this: However I do it is correct, because that's how it's always been done/it's the modern way. However you do it is embarrassingly wrong, because it violates an ancient rule/it's gone the way of the dinosaur.
ReplyDeleteFor me, pedantry itself is the greater crime. I literally do not notice if people use single or double spaces between sentences. Strangely enough, I picked up the double space habit as a pre-teen when I noticed Word would automatically capitalize after two spaces. I dropped the habit very easily once I started in publishing and noticed that single spaces were being used. And I wonder how the single-space-haters cope with the fact that all books, magazines, newspapers and websites use single spaces.
ReplyDeleteBut it takes me about the same amount of time to strip out the double spaces if there a few accidental ones or thousands of intentional ones, and I have to do the search anyway, so it doesn't matter much. Same with tabs and a few other things. No big deal either way, just part of my job.
You need two guesses?
ReplyDeleteI keep mentioning that I want to do a class for others at my firm on how to use Word's styles.
ReplyDeleteActually, you could. It takes about a day.
ReplyDeleteThis is scary, but I remember exactly where I was when we were having that discussion more than two and a half years ago (a Panera in New Hampshire).
ReplyDeleteI was going to say exactly the same thing! I recently started using one space because my husband, who is far more technologically advanced than I am, insisted that no one uses two spaces anymore. When i saw this thread I assumed all commenters would be in agreement with my husband. How wrong I was! I agree with Christy - I had no idea until my husband said something that anyone was using single spacing, and I can't say as I've ever looked at anything typed and thought, "Oh, that person has one/two spaces after the period."
ReplyDeleteActually, the percent chance that was written by anyone other than Easterbrook is extraordinarily low. He was famed for losing it over stuff like margins.
ReplyDeleteI do believe this thread may end up being the thing that gets the boyfriend regularly reading this blog. In related news, he has decided that he can no longer trust any opinion issued by Farhad Manjoo and is trying to figure out if he can retroactively unsay all previously issued praise for Manjoo's columns.
ReplyDeleteAlso, hell yeah to the serial comma.
I do so miss Word styles. I don't care how many people tell me that I will "learn to love WordPerfect!" No---no, I will not.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that the government is committed to WordPerfect is one of those things that is simultaneously unsurprising and baffling.
ReplyDelete