No Double Spaces, Damn It!
Some very smart people hire me to either write for them or to edit what they have written. I call these very smart people “clients,” and I like to think that I provide a valuable service to their businesses. Most of them appear to believe that I do, as I have ongoing contracts with many of them; in several cases, I’ve been writing for the same companies for ten years or more.
And yet I occasionally find that these same smart people do not actually trust the very person … in whom they’ve theoretically put their trust.
It usually has to do with something that they all believe they “know to be true.” In these cases, I apparently play the renegade by trying to change something that everybody “knows” to be correct. And it almost always has to do with the old rule of placing two spaces between sentences. Time and time again I write or edit client copy, placing only one space between sentences, only to have the client gently correct (and, occasionally, admonish) me about it.
I may have pointed you to this site before; if so, bear with me. Read it. Read other articles. Read Robin Williams’ books. You do not have to take it on faith that I’m correct: do your own research.
And then repeat after me: It is incorrect to place two spaces between sentences. In fact, according to a colleague of mine, it has been incorrect in the typesetting world since 1954; if that’s true, then the change in practice is not even due entirely to the advent of computers (and the subsequent demise of monospaced type).
The simple truth is that your eye doesn’t need those two spaces to know that another sentence is about to begin. Your brain is smart enough to sort that out.
So, smart people, unite: learn the rules of usage so that you can write correctly, or — alternately — keep on employing me to do your writing and editing … and trust that I know what I’m doing! And then you’ll be .. beyond the elements of style!
Posted in About Writing, Doing the Right Thing, Editing, Language, Words, copywriting on November 5th, 2008