Why are people , many people , some of whom say they have advanced degrees ( for example PHDs ) adding spaces everywhere ? Is it a thing now ?

[MrsTerryPratchett]

Just why ?

What on earth does having a PHD or other qualification got to do with spaces, spelling etc. why do people think a person who has a qualification means that person is an expect of everything?

OP, I see this all the time. Weird, isn’t it? It isn’t device related, people do it at work, too and we all use the same type of PC.

The OP isn’t talking about full stops after the punctuation. She means extra spaces.

Like this :

( Or this )

Can you see it now ?

I obviously meant 'before'.

Proper old-fashioned typists were/are taught to leave a single space after a punctuation mark except for colons and full stops where a double space follows.

PhD is the usual abbreviation, not PHD.

Or Ph.D. even.

I'm of the generation where it was two spaces after a.

I never learned to type properly, just bashed away at an ancient manual typewriter we had. When my sister was learning, I tried doing some of the touch typing exercises in her books, but I'd been doing it wrong too long. I couldn't go back to the beginning.

I have a degree and PhD and I always put 2 spaces after a full stop and 1 space after a comma, as taught at school in typing classes! Saying that my iPhone keeps making bloody paragraphs mid sentence and I can’t always be bothered to change things lol … too
busy thinking up weird things to do … usually tv and Fishdom lol

I sometimes do this on my phone because I type two spaces for a full stop, but if you don’t do them quickly enough it comes out as actually two spaces and then I’m too lazy to delete so just add the full stop after that.

Back in the dark ages I was taught to leave two spaces after a full stop, but I don't do that any more as I think it's old fashioned and I've moved with the times. It's also quicker just to type one space.

I've noticed what MrsTP is talking about; it's been gradually creeping in and it's annoying. I see it quite a bit at work, in an academic department in a university. Sometimes it's down to the device being used but not always.

I was taught to put two spaces after a full stop and the habit is too ingrained to stop.

Having a PhD isn't a guarantee of perfect SPAG - it depends what field it's in.

I had a typo on the title page of my thesis when I submitted, so...

My external examiner said it was the first time he'd seen that <proud>.

I occasionally use a space before if I am typing in a way that's designed to replicate speech and I want to emphasise the punctuation mark or indicate a change in tempo. I mainly don't and I wouldn't in writing at work or whatever.

I don't know why this happens, but I do know that if I didn't go back and proof everything I type here, I'd end up posting whatever my phone thought I was shooting for, regardless of punctuation or sense. There are also random repeats of words or single letters that I tidy up.

Maybe it's the phone or laptop causing the problem?

Same.

But MS Word disagrees.

Because one might reasonably expect somebody with that level of qualification to have a basic grasp of punctuation, that's why.

My phone definitely does it, really annoying.

I always put two spaces after the full stop which was correct in 1985! I cannot understand putting it before though

It used to be standard to leave a space before a question mark or exclamation mark, I think. You’ll see old books punctuated like that. I don’t know when the fashion changed.

To me it’s just something old and tech illiterate people do. Like someone shit at work.

It used to be standard to leave a space before a question mark or exclamation mark, I think. You’ll see old books punctuated like that.

I've never seen a book punctuated like that. How old do you mean?

I work in TV post-production. I was taught to leave a space before a question mark and exclamation mark. The reason was to make the sentence more readable on a TV screen. However, as TVs have improved over the years, we no longer do this, but you may still see some old programmes done like this.

When I did my PhD we had to employ a typist to transcribe our handwritten thesis into print. The only typing I did at the time was Fortran code and inputting data. Other languages since…
So spaces mattered, but differently. It’s mildly surprising I don’t finish sentences with semicolons.

I taught myself to type from a book, using my gran's ancient typewriter from the 30s, with stickers on the keys so I couldn't see them. It was painful to strike a key badly as the mechanism took your fingers off!

Anyway, I learned from the book to put two spaces after a full stop. I do that automatically if I'm touch typing on a keyboard but I don't do it when finger typing on my phone.

I occasionally leave a space before an exclamation mark if it makes the sentence read more easily.
‘It was Gill!’ doesn’t scan well imho, though maybe it’s my eyesight that’s the issue..

Sorry about the extra full stop there! Sometimes it is just phones and fat fingers 😅

Me too.