To Space or Not to Space...
I've been testing software this week, and spacing (in and around) punctuation has been an issue.
In the typewriter days, we learned to space twice after the end punctuation of a sentence and after colons. (I used to teach typing. It's a hard habit to break.) We have word processors now with proportional fonts. If you add the extra space, you'll get rivers of white space in your text if you fully justify your text. (If I get a document to edit, I always do a search and replace to remove the extra space.) It's really apparent when more than one person works on a document, and the end punctuation isn't consistent. In 2008, all marks of punctuation should get one space.
If you are typing a field label and a colon, the colon needs to be next to the last letter. (Some folks space twice between the word and the colon.)
If you are typing a slash in narrative text, it should be the forward slash, "/" (e.g. and/or, his/hers).
In American English, the period and comma always go inside the quotation marks. (Question marks or exclamation marks can be inside or outside, depending on the meaning.)
In the typewriter days, we learned to space twice after the end punctuation of a sentence and after colons. (I used to teach typing. It's a hard habit to break.) We have word processors now with proportional fonts. If you add the extra space, you'll get rivers of white space in your text if you fully justify your text. (If I get a document to edit, I always do a search and replace to remove the extra space.) It's really apparent when more than one person works on a document, and the end punctuation isn't consistent. In 2008, all marks of punctuation should get one space.
If you are typing a field label and a colon, the colon needs to be next to the last letter. (Some folks space twice between the word and the colon.)
If you are typing a slash in narrative text, it should be the forward slash, "/" (e.g. and/or, his/hers).
In American English, the period and comma always go inside the quotation marks. (Question marks or exclamation marks can be inside or outside, depending on the meaning.)
Posted by Crazy for Words at 4/15/2008 6:38 PM 
Categories: Technical Writing and Editing, Writers and Writing
Categories: Technical Writing and Editing, Writers and Writing
Wow, my friend! I am going to love your blog because already you have answered some writing questions that have been niggling at me, most esp. the single space/double space conundrum after periods. Thanks for the clarification!
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