Hi there,
My 50-year-old birthday came and went.Just to let you know, we are scaling back for the summer because we, like you, are enjoying the relaxation of the season.
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One Space or Two
Article written by June Hall, Editor, Windows on the Rockies User Group, Colorado
Like most people I was taught to use 2 spaces at the end of a sentence when using a typewriter. But when I started editing the company newsletter in the 1980s, was taught to use one space at the end of a sentence in published material.
If you type a question at www.google.com the websites are numerous and contain contradictory answers, replies, and opinions.
Original typewriters had monospaced fonts. Monospaced type is text produced by characters that are evenly spaced. A “W” takes up just as much room as a “1.” Thus, around skinny letters there was more space than around wide letters. To clear everything up, it was decided that an extra space should be added after a sentence to make it easier to see where one sentence ended and the next began.
In the very early days 2 spaces were also used in published material, but then along came the lead-casting Linotype machine. The linotype used wedges for spaces, rectangles for letters. After filling the line as close as possible, the operator would pull a handle, and the wedges would be forced upward, expanding (and thereby justifying) the line o’ type, which would then be cast in lead. If the operator typed 2 spaces in a row, you had 2 wedges next to each other, and that tended to gum up the operation. So only one space was used.
On Woody’s Watch
www.office-watch.com, Woody told us about all the mail – friendly mail, angry mail, congratulatory mail, why-don’t-you-check-your-facts mail, my-teacher-taught-me-this-and-my-teacher-ain’t-stupid mail – he received after making a somewhat tongue-in-cheek remark about “cleaning up after people who inevitably type 2 spaces after every period.” Woody ended by stating if you want to sell what you write, use one period because that’s the way the industry works nowadays.
A copyeditor at The University of Chicago (Chicago Manual of Style) thinks, “In our efficient, modern world, there is not room for 2 spaces at the end of a sentence.”
Publishers want single spaces after periods. Most desktop publishers believe desktop publishing (electronic type-setting) should follow the commercial publishers rule, “One space at the end of a sentence.”
Two spaces can cause problems with line breaks in certain programs. Web pages use only one space between sentences. HTML is set up to only display one space no matter how many are typed. A browser, like Firefox or Internet Explorer, will only display one.
Some people using word processing state, “those of us who use word processing software are no longer typists but typographers. While our typewriter keyboards limited our capabilities in creating text, our word processors allow us to do what professional typesetters have been doing for centuries. Consequently, many of the rules we learned as typists do not apply in the world of word processing.”
The majority of people who never do desktop publishing have no reason to change from using 2 spaces. Even some publishers prefer using 2 spaces in their personal correspondence and notes.
After getting used to using only one space at the end of a sentence in writing for published material, I use one space for everything – most everything. I have to watch myself if I type a letter for my husband as he wants 2 spaces. One of the 1st things I do when I receive an article for a newsletter is to go to Edit/Replace and put in 2 spaces to be replaced by one space.
I liked the website with the info below:
Should sentences be separated by one space or 2 spaces?
Yes.
If you want to learn more about how to create copy that reaches women, check out my She Factor Copywriting Bootcamp Do It Yourself program at http://bit.ly/redhotdiy. There is no other training in existence that blends good salesmanship with proven copywriting skills designed to sell to women in the 21st Century.
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Copywriting Strategist Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero publishes the award-winning Copywriting TNT weekly ezine with 33,000+ subscribers. If you’re ready to jump-start your business, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at http://tinyurl.com/copywriting-TNT
You know it. I know it. There’s always a little unplanned Internet surfing in each day. So make it worthwhile. Visit the free discovery search engine site www.StumbleUpon.com.
All you do is register and let Stumble know what your interests are. Then it takes you to related web pages under your topic. You can rate each page with a thumbs up or thumbs down so you get more of what you like, and less of what you don’t. If you’re going to waste time anyway, why not jump around sites that might just educate you too?
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