Blogocentric Formulations

A Tale of Two Spaces

I'd just like to go on record with saying that, while everyone has a preference for one or the other, anyone who actually lets the issue of one space or two spaces after terminal punctuation dissuade them from reading something is completely and utterly insane. I ran into this problem over the weekend when one of my wife's grad school professors returned a paper and insisted that she fix the "technical problems" in the paper, among which was the fact that my wife only spaced once at the end of every sentence rather than twice.

I'm not going to get into a debate about which is right and which is wrong, mainly because there is no right and wrong here. People who advocate for two spaces usually either say it's the way they were taught is proper, or cite that it makes the beginning of new sentences clearer and more distinct. Opponents who advocate for one space usually cite the fact that the publishing industry (go ahead, grab a book or magazine and see how many spaces they use) hasn't double-spaced published work since the invention of variable-width (proportional) fonts more than half a century ago.

So I get that there are people out there who fall on one side of this issue or another. But to actually let it prevent you from reading the content of the sentences... or worse, to be in a position of authority and to tell students or other subordinates that there is an absolute right or wrong, is appalling. One of these days I'll write a full newsletter about this kind of stuff, but for right now I just wanted to vent. I was so mad at my wife's teacher for not just handing back the paper and saying that it can't be graded... but for having the nerve to say that choosing to use one space instead of two is somehow grammatically incorrect and wrong despite the fact that every book and article they read in class uses one space.