Friday Funnies: Third Way

[chiroho.livejournal.com]

While I can't say that I've encountered such inflammatory disagreements here at fandom_grammar, we grammarians certainly have our disagreements, don't we?

[rollover text:] 'The monospaced-typewriter-font story is a COMPLETE FABRICATION! WAKE UP, SHEEPLE'
'It doesn't matter! Studies support single spaces!'
'Those results weren't statistically significant!'
'Fine, you win. I'm using double spaces right now!'
'Are not! We can all hear your stupid whitespace.'

Comments

[zhiva]

It's called "title text".

[theidolhands.livejournal.com]

I prefer two spaces, but I finally got used to one.

[chiroho.livejournal.com]

Took me a while to stop hitting the space bar twice after each sentence. I can't say that I ever really had an issue with how it looks though.

[theidolhands.livejournal.com]

Scintillating.

[debirlfan.livejournal.com]

Back in the day, I was taught two spaces, and I'm too old to change.

[chiroho.livejournal.com]

Given that LiveJournal, and pretty much any HTML text, automatically truncates two or more spaces to one space, you've probably been doing it for years here without even realizing it.

[debirlfan.livejournal.com]

I'm still typing two. I don't care what happens after that. :)

[wanted-a-pony.livejournal.com]

Yes, thank you very much, me too! (I'm not responsible for other people's inflexible programming or meagre typographic imaginations. ;-)

[starwatcher]

.
I have to admit, one space is an on-going, slow-simmering irritation. I read an explanation about how the modern font-faces give a little extra space after a full-stop, and that's enough... but it's really not. IF the next sentence starts with a regular word, that cap letter helps me notice the period, and my mind closes the sentence. But if the next sentence starts with a person's name or 'I', which would be capped anywhere in a sentence, I frequently miss the period, then find myself stumbling into a run-on sentence that makes no sense. Then I have to stop, back up, search out the period, and separate the ideas properly.

And yes, I know HTML forces a single space even when I'm typing two. You'd think, after 20-odd years on the 'Net, I'd have adjusted my reading, but I still do the miss-stumble-back up routine fairly frequently. I HATE it. That's why I copy/paste my fave stories into MS Word, and add the double spaces and curly quotes for comfortable re-reading.

But at least I'm old enough recognize what's happening, and to compensate. I find it much more problematic that period-single-space is used in printed books for young people. This year I have several students that bring their library books to speech therapy, so they can practice their target sounds while reading aloud -- and 90% of the time, they simply do not notice the period, and continue the next sentence without a pause. These students are 9-10-11 year old kids, not beginning readers. I realize that the current standards for teaching reading (faster, faster, faster!) are the main culprit, but I'm convinced that the lack of extra white space after a period simply adds another stumbling block to the process of gaining reading fluency and comprehension for young people.

So, yeah: firmly in the two-space camp, bowing to the constraints of internet life -- but only under protest.
.

[theemdash]

I fully appreciate that you can back up your preference with experience that shows that one way is more difficult for readers than the other. Thanks for sharing this anecdote!

[germankitty]

Actually, this seems to be an American-English convention -- my native language is German, and this is the first time I've heard of it!