Two spaces after a full stop

[MyDuvetDay]

Do you do this?

Or do you correct this in other people’s work by deleting all their extra spaces?

I started working on magazines in the 90s and it was considered old fashioned back then. As previous posters have said it was definitely one way to spot a more mature writer, and was the first thing to be stripped out of any copy that came across my desk!

Ha ha excellent.

I too was taught to type on manuals (how strong typists' fingers must have been, those steep, heavy keyboards!) We could move to an electric at 30wpm with 95% accuracy.

I still do double spacing. If anyone at work a) notices and b) objects, global search and replace exists. I don't know if there's a housestyle rule on it; it was hard enough to find Word and PowerPoint templates when I looked for them.

Given the random approach most of my colleagues appear to have to things like fullstops, I'm not starting conversations about spacing, justification or kerning...

I'm not seeing double spaces in posts wherein people are saying that they double space. Are they being autocorrected? These have taken me 3 attempts as predictive text slips an I or an Or in when I double tap the space bar.

EDIT: yes, both my double spaces were corrected ťo single when I submitted.

I don't use both hands to type on my phone, so I don't do it here. At least, I don't think I do. It's all mostly subconscious.

Well I have learnt a new word today - kerning! Why is justified text now frowned upon? It looks neater?
I taught myself to touch type in the early 90s as doing my own client letters was quicker than waiting for the shared secretary to type it. Double space after full stop was the house style (big 8 as it was then accountancy firm). I don’t understand why it can be considered wrong - it’s surely a style matter?

I do it. I prefer the way it looks.

Who says it's incorrect?

I still do it but I know it is no longer correct.

No one I proofread for would want a proofreader making those kinds of late style changes. You could completely through out the layout with those space changes.

Do you work as a proofreader? When I do it, I follow a style guide, I certainly would not be allowed to do whatever I wanted.

It's correct punctuation. The space after a full stop that is between two sentences is supposed to be longer than the space between words or the space after the dot that can fall mid-sentence like if you are using an abbreviation like "Mr. Smith" - but word processor computer programmes started automatically making the space after a full stop be slightly longer so apparently those of us who learned to type before the word processor computer programmes were written are supposed to just retrain our muscle-memory and rely on that instead. Why worry? It's not like the extra space harms you!

Edit to add - I deliberately used double spacing in the above and Mumsnet.com automatically deleted all of them! Humph. Putting them back in the edit but they will probably be deleted again. The thing is that while word processors make the space longer, websites generally don't, and the memory that it's supposed to be longer has got gradually replaced with the insistence that we don't need to type the 2nd space any more, and this gets perpetuated even as the reason why got made longer automatically got eliminated!

Two spaces always. I’m “traditionally trained “ 40 years ago () and was taught to do this. It makes text look so much clearer.

If someone did that for my clients, the designers would groan. They’d have to remove them all for typesetting.

I agree. Why is it wrong?

Double space all the way. Much clearer to read (as a fast reader / skim reader).

I do (sort of) miss the days of typesetting things so that they looked graceful and pleasing to the eye. We used to cast a final glance at every page to check for ugly white rivers, orphans, widows and infelicitous hyphenation, and deal with them before we could ok that page for press. Not much point if it's going to be scrolled through at speed on a tablet.

I don't miss the days of literally standing next to a jobbing typesetter as they laboriously sliced the words out of one line to move them to the next (couldn't let me do it, because "the unions"), nor the one who couldn't spell for toffee and had to have every letter dictated.

I love the way people are insisting they still do this and it looks better and yet it doesn't happen on here or any reputable website.

I also learnt to touch type on a typewriter over 40 years and you can unlearn old habits. It is so satisfying doing find and replace and seeing all the text slot back into position when editing documents.

Have you seen a modern style guide that dictates two spaces between sentences? I've never seen one.

I do it. It’s what I was taught when doing typing at night school during 6th form. Text looks wrong to me without it nowadays.

I agree. I never see double spacing and we never used it at work.

I don't think text is easier to read with double spacing.

I was taught to do this, but Microsoft Office corrects me and it's such a pita that I now only use one space.

I often do it automatically as was taught that way (and I learnt to type on a computer). But found out about 15 years ago it was less appreciated now so I try not to and go back and edit them out if I notice I have. I'm sporadically good at remembering.

I never really notice when I'm reading if people have double spaced or not. Too focused on what they are trying to say.

No I am not a proofreader, colleagues do ask me to look over their work on occasion. Nothing is being published externally and no one notices whether there’s one space or two. This thread is the first I’m hearing about it no longer being a thing. I’m the oldest in my office at 55, the majority are in their 20s/30s I’ll. have to ask them tomorrow.

Still is a thing for some.

Like others have said, it’s muscle memory and quite hard to stop doing it. But I also use find and replace to catch the times I still do it.

Interesting the years people are saying it was seen as out of date by as I was taught to type with a double space in 1998 which is quite a bit after those. We learned typing on both computer and electric typewriter and had to double space on both.