HIT> "Space Wars!"

[Wade Houston Weiler <wadew@TENET.EDU>]

I was surprised that I got so many responses concerning the matter of
whether you put one or two spaces after periods in sentences. I really
opened a can of worms. Hope I didn't start a revolution.   =:-O

There were so many responses, I'll just summarize. There are two schools
of thought on the matter of the spacing after periods. One camp is made
up of people who took typing in high school or who were (are) typing
(business) teachers. They were generally the die-hards who said "two
spaces, no matter what". "That's the way it was always done". Some even
said it looks better.

The other camp said that one space is plenty as the advent of the
computer age brought with it proportional spacing. Several respondents
cited a book called THE MAC IS NOT A TYPEWRITER by Robin Williams (NOT
the comedian), and published by Peachpit Press at $9.95. Their 800 number
is 283-9444.

Barb Baker replied succinctly that "with two spaces after a period with
computer-generated documents you end up with 'rivers' (white spaces)
running through your pages." Word processing programs seem to have
something built in that gives the proper spacing after sentences
automatically without that extra space.

The sad part of this whole thing is that, according to Deb Petersma, our
lab coordinator, high school business teachers are still REQUIRING that
students double space after periods, regardless of any changes computers
have made. I myself never took typing in high school, so naturally, I was
surprised when I heard that such a double space rule even existed. I did
teach myself touch typing just within the last few years, so I missed the
opportunity to form that double-space habit.

The final score: 18 people for one space, 9 for two spaces. By the way, I
single-spaced after periods in this document. :-)

Wade H. Weiler          "Visualize Whirled Peas..."  =:-)
Irving ISD
Irving, TX
wadew@tenet.edu