I had no idea there are two spaces after a period in some countries. In grade school here, it was two spaces after a question mark and one after a period. I’ve since been with a publisher who tells you no 2nd spaces after the q-mark anymore. Wow! Times, they are a’changing…

The one/two space debate has been quietly raging for years now, though most people just let it go whichever way you’re comfortable with. If you can’t train yourself out of it, you can always do a search and replace when you’re done. In the find, box, put two spaces – – and in the replace box, just one – -. You may have to click “replace all” a few times to make sure it takes.

But, in the end, good writers will write. They have to. They can’t help it. And I’m ever hopeful that creativity will not be killed by publishing practices. After all, we read Edgar Allen Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in literature classes, dont’ we? Both despised the demands of writing popular literature, but somehow they managed to adapt by wrapping their literary geniuses around the status quo and write for the ages.

As for the one space after a period — Those of us who’ve worked in layout/desktop publishing have known it for a long time. Ever since wordprocessing has been around, we’ve been doing the find/replace on “space space” and tightening up everyone else’s copy. A period has a space and a half built in behind it. So putting two spaces makes it even bigger than two spaces behind a typewriter’s monospaced text. Yikes!

Now, imagine if you will, a time when a writer wrote longhand, gave it to a typist, made copies, and mailed them in to agents and publishers with no opportunity for last-second editing. It was a lot more trouble back then, so fewer people did it. Now everyone who owns a computer thinks they’re a writer, so the slush pile must be tremendous!

Agents/editors expect perfectly edited copy the first time, and they expect writers to be able to write well enough to sell themselves in a query letter. Unfortunately, there’s more to a query letter than just writing. Writers must also know how to market themselves. I can understand how this would be frustrating to writers who just want to WRITE a masterpiece and have it discovered and marketed for them so they can go back in their cave and write some more.

Times have changed. Remember when every middle manager had a secretary? Now they have a computer and are expected everything themselves. We all have to adapt to the changes in society and business. It’s as simple as that.

Also the Chicago Manual of Style, which is the grammar Bible for American English has an FAQ on the subject: http://tinyurl.com/5jyl26

Or maybe I have it backwards, and it’s single-spacing that’s germanic?

Thanks for an interesting and informative post!