Repartee wrote:

A long, long time ago, I can still remember how the music used to make me smile, and...

beak wrote:

I've never done anything else other than double-space after the full stop - I was classic without even knowing it! 

Good lord I was right but I let myself be beaten into submission by group think!

For ever since when I had been double spacing after what you call a full stop and what I call a period. Then, I think, even when I typed something, I remember my wife who was all smart 'n literary 'n such, so I would think would know, asking "Why did you do that?" in a tone suggesting this was some embarrassing bit of illiteracy. That single snub did not deter me, but I believe Microsoft Word puts those darn squiggly grammar lines in when you do it, so I finally stopped not so much because I thought Word was right, but the way you might let a nagging person get their way just to shut them up.
.... snip ....

Relax---there are reasons for all of this. It helps sanity to know how all these "rules" came to be. First of all, it's not a matter of "right" or "wrong" but rather clarity and aesthetics.

tl;dr: Relax; each style has its place.

In the days before computers, there were typists and typesetters and they didn't mix much so they didn't argue. Typists worked with fixed-width fonts and so double spacing at the end of sentences helped clarify the flow of the thoughts. Most (all?) typing teachers taught double-space-after-a-period and the students learned it without thinking about it (And why should they? How many of you double-spacers put a double space after the period in "Dr.  Jones"?)

Typesetters, OTOH, worked with proportional fonts and a single space at the end of a sentence in such a face better fits the visual flow of text than the jarring double space.

Then along come computers and millions of people with no knowledge of typography start "generating output" with proportional fonts. All they have to go by is the old typewriter rule above that they either remember or are taught by older people who do remember their typewriter days but who never had any knowledge of typesetting. Pretty soon after that some people who _do_ know typography are grousing about how single spacing looks better with proportional fonts (which it does). Now we got disagreement about rules. I lived through all of this in the 1980s.

Actually it's not about stupidity or literacy as such but simply about following a rule without knowing why. Or, more accurately, without being aware that different conditions led to different styles. 

So now you know. Relax.

The predominant style with typewriters is double space at the end of sentences; do that and your work today will have that period look.The predominant style with proportional fonts, which almost all computer work today is, is single space at the end of sentences; do that and your work will look like you know what you're doing.

HTH

Yikes

Copy and paste from MS word does weird things on this forum. If I could edit this I would, guess we'll just have to muddle through it as best we can.

Sky

skywatcher wrote:

Yikes

Copy and paste from MS word does weird things on this forum. If I could edit this I would, guess we'll just have to muddle through it as best we can.

Sky

Well to you and all who took time to create a serious reply to my random rant, sincere thanks! It is appropriate that a comment on a detail of formatting whose changing convention is wrapped up with the transition from typewriters to word processors should be mutilated by copying between different text editors.

The story told by you and M. Höhne about monospace and proportional fonts and the superiority of governing one's actions by reason rather than rote rules taught by the dead hand of a pedant is cogent and convincing, but I have one doubt: the motivation in aesthetic appearance to double space at the end of a sentence may have been removed by proportional fonts - but I'm not sure how technology has maintained the desirable goal of distinguishing between an abbreviation in the middle of a sentence and the end of a sentence. Are we sure typesetters never took account of this? Even if they did obstinately keep the same space in Dr. Jones and at the end of a sentence this is yet another case where we don't have to be governed by anybody's dead hand. There clearly is some information in a variable amount of space which cues the reader whether he has reached end of a sentence.

Those who hold all explanation of apparent mental lapse as simply equivocation to avoid condign punishment may be skeptical, but I really do habitually favor reason over rote: I was enjoying the free verse rant and the pleasure of under rather than over editing thought. Now possibly I should not mention anything, but in a long and misspent life I've noted that the imperative "Relax" seldom has the literal effect - more usually the opposite.  I was completely relaxed when I wrote that standard rant  !

 <full stop, period, halt, End>  

I was told repeatedly by a writing tutor some years ago, that my work looked unprofessional with single spacing, and that I should learn to double-space after a full-stop. I had the opportunity not long after this to clear the question up with a literary agent. He thought it was the most ridiculous advice, and said, "No one cares about that. It's the writing that matters."
I single-space after a full-stop when using a typewriter too.

I would curse every double-space typing teacher who ever lived when I worked on a newspaper copy desk during the transition to pagination and we began receiving such copy from outside sources who all appeared to be typing class graduates. It was even more infuriating when some reporters did it, but at least I could yell at them.
The extra space was quite visible in the printed newspaper and wasted valuable space in a medium where getting one extra sentence into print counted. Wire services did not tolerate it, and the old pros on the Linotype machines didn't either.
Then one day I discovered the find-and-replace function in Quark also worked for empty space and I was all set.