I always learned 2 spaces after a period and I still do that. Apparently 7 years ago the rules were changed and no one bothered to tell me.

What do you guys do? This has been so ingrained in my being that I don't think I can ever change now...

Apparently the reason for stripping the extra space is because of properly spaced fonts in computers, or something like that. The extra space is no longer necessary, and yet I cannot stop myself from typing it. I occasionally also put extra spaces after ?, but never ,.

I'm pretty sure it was two spaces on typewriters. One space is standard now on computers.

One obviously.

A friend of mine always put in two or three spaces after a sentence in an attempt to lengthen the paper slowly, but other than that there's no reason to. I've never heard of the two space rule but I'm 25 fwiw.

and yet, no votes for one space in the pole.

Two.

Didn't know it was changed until I read this post.

Two. **** this newfangled one space **** and **** vb for forcing it.

no asian option?

Went back and voted after I saw somehow one space was losing.

Thinking of systems still lingering because of the limitations of typewriters, anyone think Dvorak ever has a chance of becoming widely used, or is QWERTY just boss forever now?

I always thought it was two.

I CAN STILL DREAM OF A DVORAK KEYBOARD FILLED WORLD DAMMIT

Yes. I don't care if the rule has changed. I will never use one space.

1. Aesthetically, it mades the composition look better and more organized.
2. Two spaces help protect the integrity of the sentence, as opposed to one space for a comma or semi-colon.

Really, why would this rule change? Using that logic, how about we get rid of starting paragraphs on separate lines and instead use TWO spaces to signify a new paragraph. There is just some things that you don't **** with - another man's dog, lady, car or writing style.

I put two spaces after a period on here even though the stupid forum deletes my precious space. See.

come on its def two spaces.

I've never used two spaces. I'm two years younger than my brother, and he uses two spaces. Nature versus nurture imo!!

F60,

I also do that even though I know it will be removed by vb. It is basically one of those "if it isn't broke don't fix it situations". Their is very little cost to 2 spaces and no real gain in changing it.

The MLA picks weird battles sometimes. You only really need to worry about it if you're an editor or being graded by a professor that's notably picky though.

Taso's mom always taught me if I'm going to do something, I'd better do it right.

Of course she was talking about throat ****ing, but it is applicable to this as well.

I'm old, but I never took typing in school. One ftw.

About.com did a survey on this, 43% said one space, 47% two space, 12k votes.

Linky

Growing up I always thought I had to use 2 spaces, and hated it every time I had to write a sentence. Since I learned that 1 space is correct, my life has never been the same.

I can't believe two spaces is losing.

One. I'm really glad the software doesn't let you use two. Sometimes I quote someone and see that they used two and it tilts me.

I'm extremely disturbed by this development. It has and always shall be 2 spaces. You damn kids.

this is actually not true at all. the use of 2 spaces after periods in large bodies of text, create what typesetters call rivers. it's actually distracting when reading.

today's modern computers and fonts already give proportionate spacing. the use of the double space had some thing to do with old typewriters having equal space for each letter. so an 'I' would have the same block of space as a 'W'

i can't give you the exact reasons of why, but they then used the double space to help differentiate between the last letter of a sentence the '.' and the first letter of the next sentence.

but almost every modern designer, desktop publisher or typesetter will only use 1 space after the period.