No, It's Not Old-Fashioned To Leave Two Spaces After Periods
Dear all,
For a long time I had been following Mary's suggestion and leaving two spaces after each full stop, question mark, and exclamation mark -- until someday I found
it a bit too much trouble. The newspaper I have been reading also seemed to justify my assumption that this 2-space manners have more or less become old-fashioned. Though I was aware that printed media drop another space only to save paper, this newspaper-reading experience gave me another reason to give up following the more standard and classic written English style. And few seemed to have noticed this or cared.
After the upsetting service crash of HongEn Online, David has been trying his best to bring back the blosom of this forum by writing a lot more often than he usually does. I really appreciate his dedication. One subtle change in his recent writings caught me by surprise: He has been using two spaces after each full stop. He didn't much seem to bother with that principle before.
Out of curiosity, I enquired him of this small change the day when we met online
. When being told my assumption of this two-space etiquette having become out of date, David did a small search by going to a few foreign websites he frequently reads, and several printed books that were published in a large span of time,
from 1950s to 2002s, and scrutinized.
We were all amazed when the results came out. It can't be more sure that this two-space style is still on. Even some of the recently published books observe this rule of classic written English. Cost-conscious publishers sure know very well how to save paper, yet they still respect this simple rule and pay the cost
-- to make their books look less cramped and more legible.
In this virtual world where all information is acceessed on display screens, we
don't even have to worry about save paper or even space. This extra little effort may bring your readers an easier and more enjoyable experience of reading, so
why not take that little trouble and follow?
Sincerely yours,
Pan.
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