Like oh-so-many others, I was brought up to press the space twice between sentences. When I really got into writing, I used my new enthusiasm to reserve some funds for writing books of various kinds and discovered an ugly truth: one space is enough. Specifically, the Chicago Manual of Style [the editor in me wants to call it the Chicago Style Manual] calls for only one space. The editors explain more about why this is so here.
Recently, Ken Adams took up the battle cry against two spaces, and others have flocked to his banner. It seems to be the better practice now to use one space, and I'm going to have to change my ways.
It's not that easy, of course. I've been putting two spaces after a period since I was on an Apple IIe (love that Oregon Trail!). It would have been great to switch in summer 2005 when I moved to the Dvorak keyboard (incidentally, one of the best moves I ever made--and remarkably easy), but it's too late for that. I'll just have to do my best to retrain.
i didn't know that you liked rasputina! i love them- did you see them in boulder a while back? they were kickass!
I'm a big Rasputina fan. As it happens, I did indeed go to that concert in Boulder--I loved it! My ex-girlfriend and I were leaning up against the stage--we were that close. I almost got Zoe's set list, but I was going to try to ask for it. Before I could, though, someone else fish-flopped onto the stage and grabbed it.
Que sera, sera.
omg - I loved playing Oregon Trail on the Apple IIe, except we always died of typhoid. :(
I still believe in the 2 space method but you can set WordPerfect to automatically correct two spaces into one following a period. Luckily, everyone else in the office is older than me and they still want to use 2 spaces.