AFSCME 3357-HOF'S BLOG

The Googleteer(tm) Gets Spaced Out
It's one space after period - or is it?

I learned to type in the late 1970s, on actual typewriters. My school actually had very good typewriters, IBM Selectrics, with proportional spacing. Despite the proportional spacing, I was taught to add two spaces after a period.

Now, of course, everything I learned is wrong. "To each his own" is now "to each THEIR own", even though the pronoun doesn't agree with the antecedent. My daughter informs me that it is wrong to put two spaces after a sentence-ending period. If you believe this article in Slate.com, you are an imbecile if you use two spaces after a period.

I called my superhero friend, the Googleteer(tm) to search all the knowledge of the world and tell me whether it is appropriate to hit the space bar twice after a period. Here's the search he came up with. As I interpret the results, the old two-space isn't dead yet, but it is maybe pining for the fjords. I will make it my belated New Year's resolution to become one with Landru and use one space. If i slip up, I meant to do that, maybe.

Now it's time for the marginally relevant video of the day, actually, today we'll have two marginally relevant videos, one for each space after a period.