Single Space or Double Space
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"Printed words need the relief of a surrounding blank as much as figures in a landscape need background or contrast, perspective or atmosphere." - The Practice of Typography
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"White space is needed to make printing comprehensible." - The Practice of Typography
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Single spacing was adopted to lower the cost of printing, not because it was more readable.
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@JaredBusch said:
I would need to check my the style guide from when I went back for my MS, but my memory tells me that it was not mentioned.
This, writing at the grad level I don't think I encountered this issue. I'd heard about the "controversy" before but never really thought much on it.
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I double spaced everything (English spaced) everything all the way from K through grad school and professional writing and have never had single spacing suggested or mentioned.
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It is now the MLA standard recommendation.
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And the wikipedia article is well cited.
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In summary, I do not care how you think it should be or how you were taught.
It is not how the language is typed, and has not been for years.
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It looks like the style guides have given sway to popular fashion. Double spacing has been the style guide choice for centuries. It would be nice if style guides listed why they changed their own policies.
This article gives a good viewpoint from the Economist.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It looks like the style guides have given sway to popular fashion. Double spacing has been the style guide choice for centuries. It would be nice if style guides listed why they changed their own policies.
They "gave way" decades ago. No matter what you think, or how you were taught.
Language is a living thing. It is always changing, written or verbal, it does not matter. There are no rules for how a language changes. It is changed by the users of the language as they use it.
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Cool I learned a few things today.
OK learned or Learnt?
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Learnt is what I use. It's the traditional one.
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@JaredBusch said:
They "gave way" decades ago. No matter what you think, or how you were taught.
Language is a living thing. It is always changing, written or verbal, it does not matter. There are no rules for how a language changes. It is changed by the users of the language as they use it.
There is a line, though. While that is true (for English, French does have a definition) to some degree and that is what the Oxford Dictionary is all about it is not how Americans treat it (the Websters dictionaries are about defining use before it is used, not documenting how it is used) but if you allow ANYTHING then the shortcuts that kids use today is suddenly "acceptable."
Where do you draw lines? It sounds gr8 2 call it a living language but pretty soon we ain't using a real language anymore and noone understands each other.
The problem with the pure living language theory is that you can't having proper spelling or proper grammar and communications suffers or fails. Soon ironic means coincidental and there is no word left for irony and cloud means hosted.
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@Dashrender said:
Cool I learned a few things today.
OK learned or Learnt?
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/words/learnt-vs-learned
Learned is by far the more common. Learnt, I feel, sounds better and follows the better pattern. Learned is the more common on both sides of the pond. Learnt is rare in the US, but common (just not the more common) in the UK.
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@JaredBusch said:
They "gave way" decades ago. No matter what you think, or how you were taught.
When, though? Long after the style was taught. Style started to change in low end printing around 1961. But when did the major style guides make the change to reflect the rise of the new style?
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The upside to a living language is that the use of traditional forms remains continually valid and newer styles take over but there is generally a use of the older, more formal (normally) styles to allow for those who wish to have formal, stylized, educated styles while others can have valid, simper, more fashionable styles.
In English this has been a standard migration for as long as the language has been recorded. Unlike French which is strictly regulated and effectively does not change, English mutates at an incredible rate. This causes a lot of issues, however, because regional differences rapidly make communications within the language difficult.
The example I always use of miscommunications is the Indian subcontinent commonly believing that revert is a fancy form of reply and miscommunicating with other regions.
But an example of a good living language change from the same region is the verbal use of "action".
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@scottalanmiller said:
Double spacing is from the hand written era. It continued into the typewriter era. It continued into the computer era. It's how the language has always been written. It is not an artifact of typewriters no matter what BS someone is trying to sell you.
Surely it's from the typesetting era? You can't have a double or single space with hand-writing, you can only have a space of undefined size.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Surely it's from the typesetting era? You can't have a double or single space with hand-writing, you can only have a space of undefined size.
I left much more space between sentences when handwriting than between words. I think that most people do. I was taught to do that. Apparently that became wrong at some point, but handwriting normally looked that way,
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For example, that is double spacing between sentences...
http://summerthinks.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/handwriting.jpg
Looks normal, right?
