One space or two spaces after a period? Thoughts?

I heard and use two. Also seen MDs do this as well.

It's one. Anyone who says otherwise is mentally deficient.

I've got 3 Columbia Business School Grads here who say its 2 spaces.

I feel like adding an extra space after a period is going to be something that is a pain in the ass to get used to.

I always use two also. As such.

.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing

The two spaces are a relic from the typewriter and all published material now use single spacing after full stops. This applies to the World Wide Web as well.

one space

One space after a period.

The two space thing comes from back in the day with typewriters, where the following capital letter would be too large and sometimes overlap with the letter preceding. Obviously that is no longer a problem nowadays.

2 always has been. Learned this is in computer class in middle school

2, dos, zwei

Comeon guys dont fight, lets compromise and find some middle ground, let`s start using one and a half spaces. Starting tomorrow, I am expecting all the sell-side reports I get to have 1.5 spaces after periods.

With all seriousness. It is ONE space.

Two spaces after a period is a relic of monospaced fonts on typewriters. Modern typographers agree that one space is correct, sufficient, and appropriate.

Slate did an entire article on this, which contains the following paragraph:

The problem with typewriters was that they used monospaced type—that is, every character occupied an equal amount of horizontal space. This bucked a long tradition of proportional typesetting, in which skinny characters (like I or 1) were given less space than fat ones (like W or M). Monospaced type gives you text that looks "loose" and uneven; there's a lot of white space between characters and words, so it's more difficult to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule—on a typewriter, an extra space after a sentence makes text easier to read. Here's the thing, though: Monospaced fonts went out in the 1970s. First electric typewriters and then computers began to offer people ways to create text using proportional fonts. Today nearly every font on your PC is proportional. (Courier is the one major exception.) Because we've all switched to modern fonts, adding two spaces after a period no longer enhances readability, typographers say. It diminishes it.

Argument over, 1 space unless you're typing on a typewriter. /thread

one space, end of story. anybody who says different is straight up wrong.

if you don't believe me go to NYTimes.com and check how many spaces they use. it is one space

(if you think it is two spaces, that is likely because you were taught to type on a typewrite or learned how to type from someone who learned on a typewriter. )

I'm used to one space. My MD wants double. Double it is

.

2

did you get the memo? we always double space after a period. and, we're using the new cover sheets for the TPS reports, mmkay?

Two spaces for me always. I have yet to have anyone comment to make it one space. We also don't put periods at the end of bullet points. And we frequently leave out hyphens.

It used to be 2 spaces, but apparently a lot of TEACHERS have been making the move to 1 space. It's personal preference, and the professor who told me to use one said "it was better for the environment". I guess if everybody uses one space, it adds up...

Anyways, the real reason is because people were taught double spacing after a period when using typewriters because they're monospaced. CMS and MLA both say one space.

When it comes down to it, if your MD says to put 2 spaces after a period, why the fuck are you questioning him/her? Just say, "yes sir, may I please have another." If your MD wants to know what you want another of, you say "whatever you want."

Always 1.

1, also it is much easier to get rid of accidental 2 spaces after periods in a 1-space paper. Ctrl-R " " to " ". Boom done. Good luck doing that vice-verse w/o wildcats.

One space. Anything more is redundant in the modern word-processing world. Two disrupts readability in my opinion anyway. I learned to write with two, discovered the rule for one later, and after switching, it looks and feels more intuitive.

Haha, best advice I think that can be given on this board: "just don't fuck up"

Read something your bank has already created and do what they did last time. This generally holds true for any formatting question, until the senior person wants it changed in which case they will say "do it x way, we always have done it x way." Even though you did it y way because it was done y way before.

sometimes i feel really adventurous and add THREE SPACES. see?

I've always used one... it's easier and is more business-oriented in my opinion. It is indeed gramatically "correct" to use two spaces, but I really don't think that finance gives a damn what English majors think is right.

This reminds me of the classic comma argument, i.e. which of the following is right: 1. One, two and three 2. One, two, and three

An English major would choose #2 time and time again, but in business it is written as #1 a majority of the time. In banking, I would say that both #1 and 1 space after a period is practiced more often.

No, the Oxford comma is an entirely different matter. The spacing thing is a matter of preference for modern or arcane formatting. The other is a matter of grammatical clarity. There's a big difference between "I am thankful to my parents, Meryl Streep and God" and "I am thankful to my parents, Meryl Streep, and God."

This is not the same thing as the Oxford comma at all. Two spaces is a formatting relic, not a grammar issue. The Oxford comma is a grammar issue.

Here's a classic example that illustrates why the Oxford comma is the right way of doing things:

"Our firm specializes in capital raising, divestitures, and mergers and acquisitions." vs. "Our firm specializes in capital raising, divestitures and mergers and acquisitions."

The latter makes you look like an idiot.

I've always been taught to use 2 and I always will until told otherwise.

After much web searching, I'm gonna try and start using one space behind periods. May be a hard habit to break!

Whatever your boss says. It was also accepted practice at the bank I worked at to not use the Harvard/Oxford comma when listing something (e.g., apples, oranges and bananas vs apples, oranges, and bananas). Stupid, but it was just the rule and we all followed along.

absolutely 2 spaces

absolutely 2 spaces

Apparently two posts as well.

I actually had this conversation with a friend who writes for the school paper. She noticed that I always use two spaces and said that it was weird. She said that in professional writing you are told to use one space, but MLA says two spaces. Apparently nobody cares about MLA after you get out of college so who knows which is correct. I would just follow whatever seems to be most common in your office with the higher-ups.

One space.

use 1 for school purposes and 2 for business/job related emails

Really?

I don't think I've ever met anyone who used one space.

Before this thread I did not even know that you could use two spaces. I thought OP was trolling initially lol.