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How many spaces after a period?

N

neonerd

Diamond Member
How many spaces are you supposed to put after a period or question mark? I've always known it to be 1 (one) space. Somebody recently told me that it's 1 space after a comma, and two spaces after a period.

can anybody find proof for whatever you think?

EDIT: I went to the MLA's website, and you can't really get anything from them unless you're a member, but everything is written on there with a single space after the periods.
 
Traditionally (read: Typewriter days) it has been two, but with the advent of the word processor one seems to be becoming the standard.

HTML renderers remove extra spaces, so you have to go out of your way to use two.

I still use two personally.

Viper GTS
 
One is the standard for word processing, because all modern typing programs use a longer space after a period.

Two is a holdover from typewriters, and is entirely unecessary now.
 
You know, I didn't know that and I've always used one space. Either I was never taught that, wasn't paying attention when it was taught, or I have completely forgotten about it. All my life I've been using one space and no one ever corrected me.
 
Two spaces after a period, one space after a comma. I have an old book that teaches touch-typing on a typewriter, and it says so.
 
I've always used, and was taught two after a period/question/exclamation, one after comma. I don't go out of my way to fix it in html/forums though, it's just too much work, but I still type it out of habit.

HOWEVER, I noticed while proofreading a paper for my sister (a couple of years back, she was in middle school). I noticed all her sentances only had one space after the period... and questioned her on it. She said her teachers had told her to do it that way... so... I dunno what is technically "correct" these days.
 
I used 2 spaces during the days when you had to write [x] amount of pages for a book report and the 2 spaces provided some filler. Now, it's always 1 space.
 
Originally posted by: Viper GTS
Traditionally (read: Typewriter days) it has been two, but with the advent of the word processor one seems to be becoming the standard.

HTML renderers remove extra spaces, so you have to go out of your way to use two.

I still use two personally.

Viper GTS
Click to expand...


jes.
 
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