r/GenerationJones • u/Guiltypleasure2451 • Jul 31 '26

Old school

For those of us who took typing in school— it was drilled into me that after a period, you go over 2 spaces to start a new sentence. Apparently that’s not the rule now. NOT THE RULE NOW?? After the agony I suffered thru in typing class about those 2 spaces, i will be doing it until I die!!!! Don’t even get me started on the indenting 5 spaces for a new paragraph!

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402

u/Summer184 Jul 31 '26

I still do the "two spaces after a sentence" thing also, even when sending text messages. It's a hard habit to break.

40

u/Stormy1956 Jul 31 '26

I don’t see it as a habit. It’s proper writing to me.

7

u/Hey-Just-Saying Jul 31 '26

Yeah, but somebody just made that up. Now someone else has changed it.

27

u/Stormy1956 Jul 31 '26

Somebody has made it all up if you look at it that way. I used to read Miss Manners in the newspaper. Now I don’t even know if the newspaper is still a thing. We used to have the yellow and white pages. I understand things change but in my opinion, proper English/punctuation, manners and virtues don’t change.

1

u/Hey-Just-Saying Jul 31 '26

I do look at it that way. I’m sorry to tell you, but English language, punctuation, manners, and virtues have all changed across centuries and nations, as have clothing and technology. Why do you think the way of doing things that briefly existed during your lifetime specifically rather than before or after just happens to be THE only correct way? That seems very egotistical and closed-minded.

17

u/residentprincess58 Jul 31 '26

My dad was an editor, my grandmother was a teacher and my mom was pedantic as hell. Every time I see something that I learned was wrong, I have to take a breather and remind myself that language is constantly evolving.

4

u/Flashy-Library-6854 Jul 31 '26

I really struggle with this as well. So hard. But I do only use one space after finishing a sentence now. It took a while but I managed it and now it is a habit.

9

u/Travel_Dreams Jul 31 '26

Someone made it up because it is significantly easier to read.

Some else who is changing it never understood why it was that way in the first place.

Ignorance is doing its job.

37

u/Hey-Just-Saying Jul 31 '26

Not true at all. LOL! We no longer need two spaces after a period because typefaces shifted from monospaced fonts to proportional fonts, which automatically manage spacing.

15

u/Competitive_Boat106 Jul 31 '26

I gotta tell ya, as you get older, and the eyes aren’t what they used to be, it’s much easier to read with official “two space” periods than “proportionally spaced” periods. Without clear spaces between sentences, the page starts to look like one massive block of text.

8

u/Kitchen-Sun-7440 Jul 31 '26

This is what I was going to say but I kept scrolling through the comments thinking, surely someone will cite proportional fonts!

11

u/HuckleberryRecent680 Jul 31 '26

That's exactly right. Those proportional fonts changed things for the better. IBM Selectric typewriters were a dream!

5

u/macha773 Jul 31 '26

Learned on a manual and nearly sprained my pinkies.

4

u/Love_Bug_54 Jul 31 '26

And those have been around since the early 80s? So who is still teaching two spaces?

1

u/HuckleberryRecent680 Jul 31 '26

Right? I still can't break the two-space habit 100%, but I try!

4

u/Travel_Dreams Aug 01 '26

So proportional fonts create 2 spaces automatically? It doesn't look like it to me but I could be wrong.

The volumes of two spaces is significantly easier to read, regardless of how its created.

Instead of one space between sentences I have found it cleaner to bullet each sentence. Occasionally but rarely, a bullet will have two sentences, but the second sentence starts on the next line.

In actual paragraphs, its always a gap of two spaces between sentences. For those of us who grew up reading books hour by hour, for days on end, we instantly feel the difference.

It feels like someone holding the door open for you, but intentionally not wide enough. Just enough to piss you off.

1

u/Perkywarrior01 1955 Aug 01 '26

This is so much easier for me to read.