space space

Ah, only 1 week after Spring semester finished, it is now Summer semester. Hopefully that one week was enough to refresh myself for this semester. I'm sitting here in a study room... and it's completely empty. It's odd because this room usually has at least one or two groups working on some project. Now that it's summer, campus is strikingly empty. I'm sure these observations are commonplace, but it takes up text space =). I'll need all the practice I can get with text space because I'm taking an ethics class this summer. Gotta rev up the nfinite BS engine©® and flex my typing fingers for non-technical writing. Oh and this post is long because Joy says long posts are win.

And by the way, that class is coming up next... 4:00 - 5:45 Mondays and Wednesdays. Nearly 2 hours of ethics. I truly wonder just how much discussion can occur in 1:45hr. It could go both ways -- it could be the most boring thing in the world. Or it could involve controversial topics that trigger thought-provoking discussion. Chances are it's the former though. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Speaking of taking up writing space, here's a question that I would like some feedback on. (No this is not some ploy to see who is actually reading my blog... ... ok maybe it is). How many spaces do you type after a period at the end of a sentence?

I hit my spacebar button twice (if you didn't already guess from my post title). I was recently talking with a friend about essays and they said something along the lines of "...and she puts TWO spaces after all her sentences!" To which I replied, "Is that wrong?" Of course the answer was, yes it is wrong. [For more information about this topic, I found this report about the matter.]

If you don't feel like clicking the link, here are some key points: Two spaces after a period is a deprecated rule from the typewriter days. It was necessary for readability. Since typewriters print fixed-width characters, two spaces after a period was a better visual cue for sentence breaks. Now that we use fonts with kerning, this double space is unneeded.

So, I am correct when it comes to monospaced fonts, but I am wrong with wrong fonts. (This probably means I'm completely wrong, but I'm being stubborn here).

Where am I going with this discussion? Well, at first I didn't realize I was double space-ing after sentences and so I went back to check on my essays from high school. Odd isn't it? That you don't realize how long you had some habits? Sure enough, all my papers had two spaces after all the sentences. My friend proceeded to say they had lost all respect for me because I have been cheating on all my papers. Just for kicks and to spite them, I went back to see just how much paper area I was "wasting" by double spacing after sentences.

A 5.5 page paper was reduced to 5.25 pages - roughly 5% less. Maybe that's not too much, but I can see it adding up on, say, a 25 page paper. You know what? No one has told me this practice is wrong. Until now, of course. I will probably keep double tapping that big button on my keyboard since its so ingrained in my typing habits. I'm not all that worried about fixing the bad habit either. No one has noticed (or said anything about) it. It also works in my favor for long writing assignments. The question is, where did I learn this habit?

I've been around PCs for quite some time now. Had an old 486SX my dad gave me. (Fun story about the DX and SX designations on the old 486s that I never knew until one of my professors was talking about it one day in class, but if you're interested just message me sometime) Then got an old Pentium-133. Then sometime in late middle school, I had saved up enough all-A money (report card reward for getting all As. Anything less would've been a beating) and I bought and built myself a rig with a P4 @ 1.7GHz and it was awesome. I forgot where I was going with this conversation. Let's backtrack a little...

Oh right, so I've been around computers for as long as I can remember and so my guess is that I learned how to type from old DOS typing tutor programs. My guess is that, since DOS was all a monospaced, text-based, with minimal GUI programs I learned the rules of typing within that paradigm. Coming into the GUI heavy operating systems and fancier fonts, I never learned from nor used a new typing tutor program and thus was never taught nor corrected to do a single space after sentences.

I find this development fascinating. I could say "When I was your age, we put TWO spaces after sentences!" Wait, that's not a good thing is it? Nevertheless, it's amusing to know that I carry a habit from a previous phase in computing. Well, let's see who all replies. My main curiosities are:

Did you know that we're only supposed to put one space after sentences?

How and when did you come across this information? - This could be from a typing training program, or word-of-mouth, or a formal typing class, or even a composition class.

And since we are quite the global bunch (we in references to those who I know occasionally visit this blog), it'd be even more interesting to see if there's some kind of trend in locale.

--post note
It turns out my ethics class won't have any essays. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised since it's one professor teaching a lecture hall of ~120 students. So I can leave the nfinite BS engine©® in low-power mode for this blog.