One vs. two spaces

[Bob The Mercenary]

http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?ac...int&id=2281146

The problem with typewriters was that they used monospaced type—that is, every character occupied an equal amount of horizontal space. This bucked a long tradition of proportional typesetting, in which skinny characters (like I or 1) were given less space than fat ones (like W or M). Monospaced type gives you text that looks "loose" and uneven; there's a lot of white space between characters and words, so it's more difficult to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule—on a typewriter, an extra space after a sentence makes text easier to read. Here's the thing, though: Monospaced fonts went out in the 1970s. First electric typewriters and then computers began to offer people ways to create text using proportional fonts. Today nearly every font on your PC is proportional. (Courier is the one major exception.) Because we've all switched to modern fonts, adding two spaces after a period no longer enhances readability, typographers say. It diminishes it.

Every teacher and professor I have ever had have been LYING TO ME?! This is, like, big news. Like, Pluto isn't a planet anymore news. My mind is blown.

Meh, even knowing this I'll still instinctively hit the space bar twice after a period. Our corrupt education system has ingrained this in our skulls. It has become such a part of our being it's worse than trying to quit smoking. Have you tried typing a sentence without double-spacing it? It feels so unnatural. Like I'm skipping a step.