This question intrigued me and I did a little Google research. The MLA's answer is found at the link below.

Apparently the two-space convention is a relic of the typewriter days that is no longer necessary with the proportional fonts of today's computers.

It is easier to change the rules, though, than to change a habit that's been ingrained in me for decades.

V.

Here is a link that might be useful: How many spaces?

Typically, this is automatically done when posting in HTML.

Of late, punctuation is becoming as confusing as botanical nomenclature. Many changes seem to be afoot. It is now an Associated Press rule to place a comma (Take this, Eric!) before the conduction "and". Conflicting rules dictate (As in the preceding sentence.) that periods go either before or after quotation marks used with an incomplete sentence.

After all of my moving, I really need to dig out my old reference books that Miss Scott told me I would be using the rest of my life. But will they still be current?

I get more confused as I write this.

IronBelly

Miss V. I'm so glad it said, "There is nothing wrong with putting two spaces at the end". After all the raps on the knuckles I got for not "curling" my long fingers over the typewriter, I fear I would suffer the ghosts of typing classes past if I started only using one space. Ironbelly, isn't "and" a conjunction? sheesh!

At the risk of having these words stolen from me, leaving me in penury and the thief high on the hog can I say that someone with an idea or interesting story to tell should best use the method of communication of the intended audience.
In my lifetime (I am 126) I have never read anything where two spaces after a full stop made me breath more easily than one and is this not what the dot is for? Tell the story and b*llocks to Miss Scott and her ilke.

Thanks, everyone. That's exactly what I needed to hear.

Nancy in Montreal

There an em dash in HTML (Â) but no em space. I think it'll be generations before the double-space goes away and in the meantime software'll take care of it. Unless you're self-publishing in Courier :-)

peak

What I hate is this new trend of putting periods in phone numbers instead of the traditional dash. I hate changes especially when they seem to change for the worse and for no logical reason.

I love periods in phone numbers. Makes the so much easier to read.

So we agree to disagree?

Of course.

Hi Eddie: If you had to type up a membership directory with phone numbers, you would be most happy to reach for the period instead of the dash - at least I can more easily hit the period than the dash key. I do a membership directory for 263 members, so I speak from experience.

Sharon (from GWA & Oklahoma)

Consistency is more important today than the number of spaces. An editor (or yourself) experienced with a word/desk top program can manipulate a text quite easily if it is submitted in a consistent format.

There's quite a few tools available to change spacing, 'select all', etc. The major issue is most writers (including me) never take the time to learn them. Every so often I'm shown a 'trick' and scratch my head at how useful it would have been. For example, in an above comment about dashes or periods. There's no need to type either. The dash or period can be inserted after the fact 'once' instead of 263 individual times....the default first 3 numbers of the phone listings can be easily programmed into key strokes....and other labor saving manipulations.

I remember learning to type on a manual machine. My ear pinched by the teacher for getting too many eraser crumbs into the machine and clogging it up. It was hard to type when the 't' stuck' every time.

Hi Sharon in Oklahoma, how the H... are ya?
Eddie

This site might be useful: http://www.businessballs.com/writing.htm.

Actually, IB, if you are writing your own html, it's a pain to get 2 spaces after a period. Browsers delete extra white space unless you force them to keep it - instead of "Sentence. Next sentence." you must type "Sentence. (ampersand)nbsp; Next sentence." Maybe you don't write your own html, but that's the way I do it.

Is the standard for the printed word changing because of the current technology - ie html?

When I was an English major taking some courses in journalism over twenty years ago, I was told even then that many changes to American English were initiated by the newspaper industry trying to save printing space. The comma before a conjunction was mostly being dropped, many double consonants became single, etc., and it was all motivated by the desire to save space and therefore money.

A few years ago, I was taking a course in the newest form of Word and some of us were disturbed by the new version automatically deleting our "extra" space after a period. We were told emphatically by the teacher that we were now wrong and that current business usage no longer used two spaces after a period. Those of us over 40 were quite upset, but nobody else seemed to care.

I went to a bookstore to read some newer style manuals and realized that several entries in my old Strunk & White are now considered obsolete.

I empathize.

DiggingTheDirt,

I believe you and I agree and are saying the same thing.

IronBelly

Plantcompost: You trick sounds useful, but I would have no idea how to fix the phone numbers to automatically put in the dots.
Can you do all the 10 numbers and then the dots put themselves in place without having to do anything once the secret move is done that you refer to? Can every computer be programmed to do this? I do my list on Microsoft Works database. I am not very clever at the computer with "tricks." Sharon