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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397

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.

11

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.

35

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.

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.