Date: August 21st, 2005 6:44 PM Author: cerebral potus
I always use two because that's what we were taught in typing class. One space after comma, two after period. I assumed it was like this for all types of formal writing.
Date: August 21st, 2005 9:54 PM Author: Tantric garrison
Most legal writing classes encourage using a style manual along with the Bluebook. As far as I know, all the style manuals say two spaces after a period.
Date: August 22nd, 2005 7:53 AM Author: Sinister mediation
This is wrong. The most commonly used style manual in legal writing is the Chicago Manual. While it doesn't have a rule one way or the other, the CMOS uses one space after a period, which suggests that you should too. Oh, and the Bluebook does too.
Date: August 21st, 2005 8:21 PM Author: Sick fanboi
Why would you use two spaces? Every word processing program from the last 20 years has intelligent spacing built-in. Hit the spacebar one, unless you're using a typewriter or you've been asked specifically to make the document look like strange.
Date: August 21st, 2005 8:25 PM Author: Sick fanboi
I've seen people use it and it always looks terrible. It's a holdover from the typewriter days -- some people don't realize it's not necessary on computer word processors.
Date: August 21st, 2005 9:47 PM Author: Obsidian stimulating shitlib
Your comment made me laugh. That would be funny if MSWord mandated things like this. "If you want to use our program you must always use two spaces after a period and you must never begin a sentence with but or because."
Yeah, but I took the original post on this subject to be an argument for two spaces after periods. I'm just saying that you can easily set the program to do something else, so it proves nothing.
Date: August 21st, 2005 9:51 PM Author: Obsidian stimulating shitlib
No, no, I didn't mean you did anything wrong. I agreed with your post. I just thought it raised a very funny point and I thought maybe you had done it on purpose.
Date: August 21st, 2005 9:41 PM Author: Obsidian stimulating shitlib
That is a holdover from when people first switched to word processing software. People were too confused by the apparently sudden need to only space once. You can fix it in your spelling & grammar options, the same place you can choose whether to have a comma before the and in a list (i.e. a bat, a ball, and a glove). I found out about this earlier in the summer and after researching it online, one space appears to be the rule for all normal documents unless, of course, you are actually typing them on a typewriter. As for the contracts at the NYC bank, contracts are sometimes different from normal documents. On the other hand, there is an element of preference. Some people always use full-justified and some people always use left-justified, which is correct?
Date: August 21st, 2005 9:42 PM Author: Mint offensive sanctuary goal in life
Two spaces after the period has always been standard and is standard for legal writing. HOWEVER, all word processing programs make the space slightly larger after a period, which was intended to eliminate the need to add an extra space. HOWEVER, people were so used to adding two spaces that the practice is still common, which has made the "correct" way to do it impossible to determine.
Date: August 21st, 2005 10:10 PM Author: Sick fanboi
I'm surprised so many people seem to adhere to this outdated convention, yet nobody ever uses two spaces on here. If there really was a "right" way to it or a difference in legibility, why wouldn't people use two spaces in everything they wrote?
Date: August 21st, 2005 11:44 PM Author: violent maize brunch
Um, HTML displays multiple spaces as just one space. In fact I just used two spaces after that last period. You can see this if you view the source HTML for this page. I'm also not the only person who did this.