The Double-spacing Crisis

To be honest, I never really gave much thought to the potential implications of double-spacing after a sentence-ending period.

Does the use of two spaces consume unnecessary & wasted data in files?

Is it a matter of changing standards, like those revisionists who insist on dropping the “Oxford comma” – which, for me, is absurd, given the potential for myriads of humorous and contextual errors.

Oh, behave.

In any case, the habit is quite hard to break; it took me several tries before I stopped double-spacing when typing this introduction to the post.

From the article’s forward:

Exactly two years ago, Farhad Manjoo ranted against people who still type two spaces after a period. To this day, people are still talking about the article. And some of them make a point to leave two spaces after all of their periods. In honor of the piece’s anniversary, we are reprinting the piece below.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html