Apparently everyone except me and some others between the age of 30 and 69.

I learned something on an internet forum a couple weeks ago that rocked my world. The person said they had heard it is now proper usage to place one space after the period in a sentence and not two spaces and that this is now in the MLA and Chicago Style guides. At first I laughed – changing the rules of spaces after a period in a sentence would be like stating that nobody is allowed to use the letter “I” (that’s I as in eye) or the word “the” any more – it was presented to me throughout my education as being that fundamental of a rule. What in the world was this person talking about and who duped her into thinking that? Then I read the comments below the post and shockingly discovered that it has been taught to always place one space after a sentence and not two in schools for over a decade.

According to various posts on the internet (samples here and here ), placing two spaces after a sentence was being taught in the days of typewriters because virtually all typewriters had monospaced fonts (a fixed-width or non proportional font). Supposedly two spaces after a period allowed the reader to be more easily aware the end of a sentence was coming with a monospaced font (although both of these statementss are argued online, as is the case with everything). One article states that it was always one space prior to the typewriter and now it’s gone back to one space now that nobody uses typewriters anymore and everything is done via computer. I guess this could explain why my parents had no idea what in the world I was talking about when I brought up the subject with them that the two space rule had been jettisoned. They thought it always had been one space and never even knew the two space rule existed – I suppose it’s possible the typewriter wasn’t omnipresent enough while they were in school to warrant the change in teaching methods? They are close to 70 years in age and when I asked my aunt who is several years younger than my parents what she knew the rule as, she stated it was always taught as two spaces to her. Further forum posts suggested that the dividing line for people that had never heard of the one space rule was people over thirty.

When I told my wife about this, she said she wasn’t aware of the one space rule either, and then asked “If it’s a real rule, why don’t word processing applications such as Microsoft Word flag two spaces as being incorrect?” I wondered the same thing. Amusingly enough, when my parents and I were discussing it, my dad said “then how come Word doesn’t flag every one of my sentences when I put one space after them?”

The fact that everyone under thirty knows it to be one space is especially disconcerting. Not only does this make me feel like an ancient old man , it simply doesn’t compute. How is it that I was taught all the way through college while graduating from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1997 that there are two spaces after a period while younger students coming up through middle school and/or high school just a few years behind me were being taught one space? Was the rule phased out by letting people who had been taught two spaces before the rule change continue to be taught two spaces while younger students were being taught one space by the same teachers? Also, who or what organization suddenly decides these rules then somehow gets all English, Keyboarding, and Computer teachers to implement them? The efficiency of what was this apparent paradigm shift is scary.

One possible explanation for my case is that the University of Maryland at College Park was, frankly, significantly behind the times when it came to education. I was not impressed with the University and I dropped out of the Computer Science program in 1994 because the professors had basically never heard of this thing called a “network,” and more importantly did not know of this “internet” that students spoke of, something that I knew was poised to revolutionize the way information was passed around the world within a few years.

I can say that in late 1993, I was turning in papers for what was effectively English 101 and wasn’t rung up for having two spaces. I can say the same thing for another writing class I took in 1996 and this person was a definite stickler for doing things the “right” way. But looking back, I can say that it was probably a monospaced font that was being printed out of my printer, so maybe they were right. But in 1996 and 1997 I worked for the University of Maryland and was writing items for an office that used Times New Roman. I can say I used two spaces and to the best of my knowledge, all of the older adults in the office did so as well.

Some of the articles and posts I’m reading state that it was always one space in newspapers and magazines and that people didn’t even notice this was the case, so this change isn’t that big of a deal. I actually did notice this going through grade school because it looked odd to me, but never bothered to ask why this was because I assumed it was for conservation of space on the page. But one item to note is that I wrote for two years in high school for the good old Cougar Express newspaper, which supposedly won some sort of award for the first year that I was writing for it. That paper was designed in some sort of designer program that I can’t remember the name of and the text was imported from what we wrote in good old WordPerfect (which I wouldn’t be surprised in the least bit if people younger than 30 have never heard of it). Of course, that text had two spaces after the period.

Anyway, after careful consideration, I’m keeping two spaces after my periods. I’m not doing this because I feel it would be difficult to unlearn the two space rule in the short term, I’m doing this because I feel it would probably be difficult for me to unlearn the one space rule thirty years from now when it’s changed again to a two space rule after having unlearned the two space rule now. Confused yet? So am I.

P.S. On a semi-related note, some guy rips apart Strunk and White’s Elements of Style here . People from my generation should be aware that this should be considered the Bible of writing and anyone that writes the English language should keep it on their bedside table to read every night (according to English teachers). I don’t know if it still is being taught today that Elements is the Bible, but I found the following sentence towards the end of the article especially interesting: “Several generations of college students learned their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely anxious and insecure whenever they write "however" or "than me" or "was" or "which," but can't tell you why. “ This describes me exactly when I write the word “however.”

My bedside table as it exists today. However, the book was placed on the table for effect in the photograph and was later removed.