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one space or two?

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scotfiddle:
The instructor for a writing course I'm taking keeps insisting that I only put one space between sentences.  She says putting two is a leftover from the days of typewriters and any editor who sees it will be very aggravated if they have to go thru the mss and undo all the spaces.

Am I so far out of the loop that I've missed something like this?  I'm not the most computer literate person in the world, so that's a possibility.

What do y'all think?

Karen

Joyce S:
I have no idea who came up with the new 'rule' but I was told years ago to put only one space after the period. It took a long time to get used to it. In fact, for months, I would do a 'search and replace' on documents that went up to management because the executive assistant WOULD call you on that error.

Recently, I've had the opportunity to work with a number of 'off-shore' personnel on a months-long project. They use single quotes where I'd been taught to use double quotes. As you can see from this post, it didn't take me long to adopt that particular habit. Even, horrors, to the point of putting periods and commas outside the 'quotation marks'.

But, what the hey, what's life if not change.

Joyce s

linda:
You made me remember an internet friend of mine, Joyce.

My friend and I were going to edit each other's work.  It didn't take us long to realize we weren't following the same rules.  We kept finding "errors" until we realized that, since he's in England and I'm in America, the rules are different for each country. 

He was using single quotes and putting the periods and commas outside the quotes.  And he was changing my work to fit those rules. 

And I was changing his single quotes to double quotes and putting the periods and commas inside the quotes.

Now we just edit on the content and leave the quotes and spelling and periods alone.  We get along so much better that way.


Linda

Chase:
What about editing for your intended market?  If you're writing for publication in the U.K., use their rules.  If you're writing for publication in the U.S., likewise.  The differences are way beyond quotation marks and period placement.

Chase

Elena:
I've heard the same thing, and have been given the reason that it is to save space so fewer pages have to be printed.  I've never been interested enough to do the math, so I do not know if that is reasonable or an urban writer's myth. It is in common usuage now.

However, no one is going to go through your manuscript and change each one - you instructor is living in the age of typewriters - all they will do is some version of a global change if needed, which you certainly could do yourself before sending your work out. 

If you are writing for a specific publishers, take a look at their output and see if it looks like one or two spaces.

Some publishers will give you a list of these things and ask you to modify your own manuscript, others set up some sort of computerized task to handle all these things, like a macro, and automatically do it to every manuscript.

Probably most important - enjoy yourself!
Elena

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