The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. After jumping over the dog, the fox typed into his journal using two spaces between sentences.
Over at Caffeinated Politics that there’s a light-hearted post about whether proper punctuation allows two spaces between sentences, or somehow requires only one space. See, Two Spaces After A Period When Typing A Sentence?
This is only a topic because a few hidebound people insist, demand, and implore that all the civilized world follow their way.
In his post, blogger Gordon Humphrey comes down on the side of two spaces. Wisely and well decided, I’d say – many bloggers use the same two-space style of punctuation. (I’m one of them.)
There are probably a few reasons bloggers do so, but I believe it simply improves readability on the screen.
I’ve a mere hunch that those who favor one space are paper-centric, and pre-digital in outlook.
Yet, for those who insist on one space, and demand that all others follow their rigid approach, there’s this inauspicious trend – it’s not print but digital that will set the century’s standard of punctuation, composition, rhetoric, etc.
They may advocate all they’d like for the propriety of one space, but the future, I’m afraid they’ll find, belongs to those in the digital world who use two spaces.
These holdouts might just as well become accustomed to a two-space style.
They may not like it. Nonetheless, two-spaces will prove to be the spacing of words to come.