So, tonight, after struggling all day with the layout, etc., of this new blog, and not understanding ANYTHING except the fact that I have no idea what I’m doing, I heard the following bit of news on NPR (thank you, Fresh Air!):
The double space after a sentence is dead.
What?!? Really?!? Why didn’t I get the memo?!? Was the death official? What is on the death certificate? Was it murdered, or did it die in its sleep?
Did I miss it because the memo would have been typed, double-spaced, with two spaces after every sentence?
Or, because it would have been printed on that paper that had tracks on the side, that we had to tear off?
How can those who are in their mid-twenties tell us – NOW!!! AFTER WE OLD FOLKS HAVE BEEN WRITING ON-LINE! – that we have missed the change? That it happened, literally, while we were faithfully double-spacing after all of our sentences?!?
While I think this conversation is informational and entertaining, I am, for once, speechless. Right then, after I typed two spaces after my sentence, I just watched the train leave the building.
So, please – those of you who are young and hip to the ways the typewriter has made us old folks obsolete – will you please let us know so we can keep contributing to this mighty society?!? Or just so you don’t have to pay to put us in a nursing home?!?
Great stuff, Heather!!!
Woody
So it’s official, eh?! I had come across the little piece of info that the popularity of the post-sentence double space was waning. I think it was in one of Caleb’s grammar books that we’ve used for homeschooling sixth grade, I read that the double space after a period was “optional.” And now it’s gone for real? Who gets to make those decisions?!
No kidding. This one is killing me now that I’m serious about this web thing:)
Here here, I was typing up report cards and it really seems like ‘they’ don’t want this change brought to the attention to the older folk – My school reporting program automatically corrects and therefor null and voids my double space after a sentence so that I continue along, none the wiser to this now grammatical faux-pas!
And here we just go double-spacing along because no one bothered to tell us! Thanks for the comment, Jane, and good luck with that pesky double-space!