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Subject:Two spaces after periods? Not! From:"Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> Date:Sat, 6 Mar 1999 05:03:27 -0700
Rebecca Merck <<...grew up putting two spaces after the dad-blammed
period, and I want to keep doing it... But Word marks it as
incorrect (or worse, AUTOCORRECTS IT!) every time I do it... Does
anybody know how to tell Word to mind its own business and leave my
stinkin' spaces alone?>>
The double space rule arose predominantly from the use of monospaced
(fixed width) fonts on typewriters, and was arguably necessary to
help make the positions of sentence endings a bit clearer. With
modern proportional fonts, the double space is no longer necessary
(if it ever was necessary), and given that the modern trend is
strongly (one might say overwhelmingly) towards eliminating the
double space, I'd recommend leaving Word's behavior alone.
If you absolutely must retain both double spaces and your sanity,
simply go to the Tools menu, select Autocorrect, and turn off that
particular item in the list of corrections... but let me hasten to
add that a little insanity is not necessarily a bad thing. ("But I'm
feeling much better now..." <g>)
