One Space or Two

One of the most important and burning questions of our day is: When you end a sentence, is there one space after the period before the next sentence or are there two spaces? Wars could be fought over this. Not because the space or lack of it really matters so much but because, either way, somebody's paradigm is being shaken. People don't like it when you mess with their paradigms. It makes them feel like the world is an uncertain place. They need their space(s).

Back in the day before keyboarding (i.e. computer keyboards), schools provided typing classes where 25 to 30 pupils sat in rows and rhythmically wore out their fingers banging away on Underwood Fives or IBM Selectrics. Those manual typewriters were better than fingertip pushups to build up the muscles in the forearm. If you were there, you remember being solemnly taught that you always put two character spaces between a period and the first word of a new sentence. Always. It was a law of nature and nature's God. Points were docked if you didn't. I had to be careful and make sure I got in that extra space. It was easy to skip one when I was typing as fast as I could. That, and I constantly mistyped and as "nad." I still do that. But Word knows my tendency so it autocorrects for me. I love technology.

Mrs. Gonnaretiresoon taught us that the reason for the two space rule was to improve the readability of the text. It provided a visual break which helped the reader to group the ideas in a sentence more efficiently before moving on to the next one. Typewriters used a monospace font, the character I takes as much space on the page as the character M. So you typed two spaces at the end of the sentence to create a visual break. The little gap was a comprehension aid.

That made sense. We bought it completely. Then along came the word processor and its proportionally spaced fonts. The fonts were now spaced to accommodate character width, position in the word, and space AFTER the period (or the Full Stop for any Brits out there). Two spaces were no longer needed after the period. This little magical feat was brought to us by a word processing miracle called kerning.

That didn't matter. Mrs. G had drilled it into us. It was a fact of life. It was dogma. And we were trained to do it that way. Our brains didn't accept that we were writing a new sentence until our thumbs actually hit the spacebar twice. And that was the way it had always been done.

Except, it wasn't.

I also learned the two space rule because I, too, was a student of Mrs. G. But when I submitted my first manuscript for publication it came back with a polite request from the publishing house to remove the double spaces between sentences and then resubmit. Publishers have always used one character space in books and magazines. I went back to newspapers and periodicals from 1888 to 2000 to prove this to myself. I looked through books and documents. A Gutenberg Bible wasn't available to personally handle but from a jpeg on the internet it looked like Johannes was a one space publisher as well. They all, with few exceptions, used a single character space between sentences. A core formatting guide prepared by a publishing expert with a parvenu occupational designation of Typographic Consultant has all but assured that this rule is THE rule.

Now we turn to the newest research paid for by your hard-earned tax dollar…double character spacing between sentences is actually bad for you. Okay, not you, the writer – but bad for the person who ends up reading your document. I'm sure there are plenty of people who wanted to go out and hang themselves after reading something I wrote. But the actual problem is that it puts a strain on your vision. Take a full page of text from a document containing double spaces between sentences and hold it out a few feet from your face. Now squint. You will see rivers of white space going up and down the page. Studies have shown that the rivers of white space cause headaches and eyestrain in many readers. They lead the eye away from the text. This is hardly noticeable to the reader because they are concentrating on the meaning. But over time this constant readjusting of focus causes strain and fatigue.

This eye fatigue happens at a much slower rate when tested on documents with a single space after the period. That's why you can read a novel all afternoon, even though the type can be much smaller and condensed, compared to a much lesser duration for memorandum and SOPs. And all along you thought it was just the content material. It's as much a matter of readability as it is appeal and engagement. Trapped white space can make you woozy. Just tell the employee health nurse that you are suffering from White Space Wooze. There may even be a code for it.

We've covered tradition, best practices and medicine. Let's look at the recognized authorities on grammar and format. The Chicago Manual of Style, The APA Style book and the Modern Language Association (MLA) all recommend using one space after a period. And to emphasis the point, the Chicago Manual of Style declares this not once, but three times:

• A period marks the end of a declarative or an imperative sentence. It is followed by a single space.
• A single character space, not two spaces, should be left after periods at the ends of sentences (both in manuscript and in final, published form).
• In typeset matter, one space, not two (in other words, a regular word space), follows any mark of punctuation that ends a sentence, whether a period, a colon, a question mark, an exclamation point, or closing quotation marks.

Ironically, as well as coincidently, the grammar guide provided at my workplace on the Erie VAMC Support Our Staff SharePoint site states that for the use of a period [.] you should "use one space between the period and the first letter of the next sentence. This goes against the grain for people using the typography instilled by generations of old-fashioned typewriter users, but modern word-processors nicely accommodate the spacing after a period, and double-spacing after a period can only serve to discombobulate the good intentions of one's software." (http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/)

So Mrs. G was wrong. But don't blame her. She learned it from her typing teacher, Miss Slaghoople, who taught back when typists would have to hit the font bar with a rock to typeset. Which is ironic (or is it coincidental?), because ancient languages were written without any breaks between words. Then again, they didn't use punctuation at all; a species tendency that is resurfacing with the popularity of texts and tweets. Nobody knows when or why the double space myth set in to the common knowledge base. Typing instructors taught it religiously while all the while oblivious to the magnitude of the single spaced material around them. But that's societal nature. Conventional wisdom is hard to change – after all, we still believe George Bush ran to the Supreme Court in the 2000 election (Gore did), that tomatoes are vegetables (scientifically classified as a fruit) and that caviar actually tastes good (blech!).

Today, technical material is single spaced. I mean go ahead and try and get two spaces to show on a browser address or while creating an HTML webpage. Can't do it unless you know the cheats. But many non-technical writers still author documents with two spaces. Even with writing convention against it they do it anyway. Why? Because they really do believe their documents look better. So maybe it is ultimately a style choice. Using one space is now the most widely proscribed style, but ultimately it is really about communication and design. Is the design of the document (spacing, font, justification, etc) effective? Does it look the way YOU want it to look?

The Gregg Reference has this to say about it:

Now that the standards of desktop publishing typically apply to all documents produced by computer, the use of one space is recommended after the punctuation that occurs at the end of a sentence. Yet this standard should not be mechanically applied.

In all cases, the deciding factor should be the appearance of the breaks between sentences in a given document. If the use of one space does not provide enough of a visual break, use two spaces instead.

Style manuals are good guidelines but they are not the law. Ultimately the style choice is left to the writer or the publisher. And just in case you didn't notice, I wrote this whole thing with 2 spaces between sentences. But you couldn't, could you? The layout won't allow it. White space is not allowed.

Now, just don't tell a secretary that the QWERTY keyboard was actually designed to slow the typist down so they didn't jam up the keys with their speed. But that's another story…

Megacards

How do you know you are getting old? When out-of-the-blue your brain suddenly speaks up and goes, hey dude do you remember that one time when…? That happened to me recently. My aging brain cells decided to do a data dump and I suddenly had a synaptic recall of an incident back in '87. That was back in the olden days. In 1987 I had recently returned from two years in Brazil. I was working for a living while trying to save for my next run at a college education.  In 1987, Erie PA just wasn't the place to find a good job. In 2010 it isn't a good place to find a job – period. But this is a rambling reminiscence, let's just stay in 1987.

A couple of the jobs I held were typical minimum wage jobs.  I was a bread-slicer.  Did you ever wonder how all those loaves of bread in the bags get so uniformly sliced? Nah, neither did I – knowledge isn't always comforting. I did that very late at night and very early into the morning at SuperDuper on W. 26^th St. I was an Arby's Roast Beef slicer. I did that late in the evening at the brand new restaurant at E. 38^th and Pine. The owner's wife would come in and go through the garbage to make sure we weren't wasting good product. Let me tell you, there are stories to tell. That's why I never ate there unless I prepared my own food. And I was a Laundry delivery driver. I did that early in the morning.

The laundry job wasn't so bad. I got to drive all over NorthWestern PA. The radio was my friend and the labor was light. I was lucky to have the position. I only had it because there was an emergency opening. The usual driver was named Tim. He was what you would call soberness-challenged. He got drunk one night and drove his car into another vehicle and lost his license for six months. I say he got drunk one night. But I am not sure he ever was completely sober. The company put him on one of the big washers and he spent his days dropping heavily loaded nets of laundry into the machines. He didn't like it. His eyes were always bloodshot red and he looked like he had fought all night with the demons from the pit.

One day a complaint came in that I had been rude to one of the clients at an Edinboro Country Club. Though I swore my innocence the boss fired me within 10 minutes of the phone call. He couldn't afford to lose clients. Tim had just gotten his license restored and he was only too happy to take his old job back. It didn't matter much. The laundry went under soon after. I found out later that it wasn't me the country club had a problem with – it was another driver. Laundry owner man had too much pride to call me back. That would mean he had to apologize. Besides, Tim had resumed control as his wheel man.

A few months later I was lucky to hear of a new place that needed people badly. It was a company called Megacards.  It was in an old warehouse near 26th and Cherry.  Trucks could barely back into the dock because there was no room to manuever.  In fact, drivers usually had to call the shop and get directions because they had driven back and forth on 26th street several times and still didn't have a clue where the place was.  I always thought it would be a great place to leave a body in one of those crime drama shows.  "Over here, Detective. The body was found by a homeless guy going through the dumpster beside this rundown old shop."  "Poor fellow.  The victim's decision to stop and take a pee in this part of town was the last bad decision he'll ever make."

All I did all day long for most of my sentence there was to stand at a big table and sort baseball and football cards.  When we got in a batch of hockey cards it was cause for celebration because there was at least some variety.  It was so mind-numbing that I remember the stockboys spending a full day arguing over the bra size of the girl who brought the insurance papers.  Which, come to think of it, is a full day's worth of discussion for 18-20 yr old guys.  The fact that these guys were in their 40s and 50s was disturbing to me.  Now I know that some guys are perpetually 18 years old when it comes to bra sizes. Even so, Megacards was a job you could only dread because the days were tedious and interminable. 

A bunch of my former co-workers from the laundry were already employed there, including the owner who fired me and Tim the tipsy wheelman. They worked the overnight shift.  They just stared at me through bleary eyes the first morning I walked in. They were all hunched over one of the big tables and sorting cards into piles. When enough of us had gathered to the side they just put their cards down and walked past us. We simply took up a spot and resumed the sorting. A 10 minute break in the morning, a half hour for lunch and another 10 minute break before quitting time. We were staggered for break times even though there was no moving machinery at the tables to keep running.  We were the machine. The production had to keep moving. I guess the boss never did figure out that the total man-hours were the same whether he staggered us or let us all break at once.  Maybe he thought that if there was no movement then he was losing money.  Or maybe he just tried to keep us from planning a jailhouse riot.  It could have been either. 

The boss was a tartar named Ed. He had been the mechanic at the laundry. Now he was the boss at the sportscard shop. He had managed to pocket enough laundry money to buy a piece of ownership in this new venture.  Ed was one of the meanest cusses I have ever met.  Even if he didn't growl at you for some imagined misstep, he would stare you down like he was the alpha lion in the pride.  If you didn't avert your eyes in deference fast enough he would find an excuse to yell at you.  His eyes were usually bloodshot red, too.  Many assumed it was from too many late nights at the bar. But I think it was because he didn't sleep much. Or maybe it is something that just happens to people who work for years at an industrial laundry.

Ed was always at work at 5 in the morning.  He left late too.  The job was his life, and pity the fool who didn't make it their primary priority as well.  Sports memorabilia was right next to cancer research and world peace in global importance. You can make a good living on any of them.  Except for the peons who worked the sorting tables.  One plus about the job was that you could earn a little extra scratch at Megacards.  We were allowed to work extra hours if we wanted; encouraged to, in fact.  But there was no overtime because we weren't required to work OT.  We got the regular wage whether it was a 40 hour week or an 80 hour week.  Another way to make extra dough was to sneak a high value card out of the shop.  Legend has it that Joe V. smuggled out a box of 100 Bo Jackson rookie series cards.  I have no idea if this is true or not.  How do you sell 100 of them?  I'm suspicious of the claim.  But knowing Joe, it could have happened.

One day I got the nod to work on the cutter.  The sportscard sheet-cutter sat in a prominent position in the shop.  It was front and center. All peasant activity was in the hinterlands that surrounded the cutter kingdom. We all passed around it daily like pilgrims circling the black stone on a Hajj.  Any annointed enough to be assigned work on the cutter was also called a cutter.  The cutter had a very precise job because the cards needed to be cut at exact specs as to edge and margin. The margins were measured to 1/100 of an inch. If you messed up a lot of money went down the drain.  A Bo Jackson rookie card could pull fifty bucks.  One bad cut through fifty stacked sheets could potentially cost the company several grand.  If you got a shot at being the cutter it meant that someone noticed your work was careful and errorless.  It was actually a more physically demanding job, but it had an air of trust in the assignment.  We were starved for recognition and thought the job of cutter to be a gift of selection from the gods.  The cutter was a potentially dangerous tool.  It sliced through stacks of sheets of cardboard like a hot knife through room temperature margarine.  Thinking back now, being promoted to cutter was probably like being the native girl chosen to be thrown into the volcano to appease the island deity.  It might hurt you, but there was honor in being chosen.  Not that Ed would try to hurt you by putting you on the cutter.  The cards were too precious to stain them with the blood of such common and jejune employees as us.  He could always find other ways to punish you. He could send you back to hours and hours of sorting cards.

The cutter took a little time to get used to, but we developed a rhythm.  Soon, my co-workers and I had it moving along pretty darn good, if I do say so myself.  As the day wore on, we ran out of boxes to place the cards.  Every card was sorted out by player and year and placed in boxes of 500.  Like Oliver Twist, I was the unlucky fellow chosen to go up front and ask Ed for some more.  It wasn't really as scary to me as the other guys thought it would be.  It wasn't our fault, I thought.   We simply needed more boxes. 

So I went up to Ed, and I looked him in the eye and said, "We need some more bosicks."  He looked at me like, "What the…?"  I tried again, "We need more bockes, bosix."  My tongue was completely tied.  I just couldn't say the word boxes.  I tried again, "I mean we're out of bosses."  At this point his glare turned to genuine concern.  I could see his mind starting to analyze the situation before him.  I had this flash of insight.  Ed thinks I have lost my ever-loving mind.  He's probably been dreading this moment for months.  He's waiting for me to pull a weapon and shoot him and half the joint up.  Two months of brainless rote and repetitive toil has turned me postal.  In frustration I pointed to a pile of packed boxes.  "We need more of those."  The recognition crept back into his eyes as he comprehended the jist of my petition.  His understanding returned.  So did the meanness.  "So why the hell didn't you say so?  What are you, some kind of moron?  There are more on the dock around the flats.  Go get 'em yourself."  And with that, he strutted back into his office and slammed the door.  His office was equipped with a private bathroom.  I can only hope that I scared him bad enough that just then he had to use it. 

And thus I temporarily became the company idiot.  The next day I was back at the sorting tables shuffling cards.  But the look on Ed's face was worth it.