Single Space or Double Space
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Sloppy is sloppy. It shows that someone doesn't care about the quality of their output.
Well, I will give a little to those who were taught wrong, but only as long as they haven't been told the correct way to do it.
And never looked it up. I've been exposed to good writing many times in my life, one bad teacher would not have been enough to cause a problem.
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If you're a casual writer, why would you look it up (and frankly, where would you look it up?)?
Now AJ's not claiming to be a casual writer, but unless someone brought it up, like this thread, why would you go looking for something you don't know is a problem?
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You should run into it in style guides. I've been seeing it over and over again all through elementary school, high school, college, etc. And it seems to even come up in IT forums
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@scottalanmiller said:
You should run into it in style guides. I've been seeing it over and over again all through elementary school, high school, college, etc. And it seems to even come up in IT forums
I've got college manuals and professors, high school teachers, and plenty of other people who have never once made so much as even a comment about single spaced papers.
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I would need to check my the style guide from when I went back for my MS, but my memory tells me that it was not mentioned.
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"Printed words need the relief of a surrounding blank as much as figures in a landscape need background or contrast, perspective or atmosphere." - The Practice of Typography
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"White space is needed to make printing comprehensible." - The Practice of Typography
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Single spacing was adopted to lower the cost of printing, not because it was more readable.
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@JaredBusch said:
I would need to check my the style guide from when I went back for my MS, but my memory tells me that it was not mentioned.
This, writing at the grad level I don't think I encountered this issue. I'd heard about the "controversy" before but never really thought much on it.
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I double spaced everything (English spaced) everything all the way from K through grad school and professional writing and have never had single spacing suggested or mentioned.
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It is now the MLA standard recommendation.
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And the wikipedia article is well cited.
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In summary, I do not care how you think it should be or how you were taught.
It is not how the language is typed, and has not been for years.
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It looks like the style guides have given sway to popular fashion. Double spacing has been the style guide choice for centuries. It would be nice if style guides listed why they changed their own policies.
This article gives a good viewpoint from the Economist.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It looks like the style guides have given sway to popular fashion. Double spacing has been the style guide choice for centuries. It would be nice if style guides listed why they changed their own policies.
They "gave way" decades ago. No matter what you think, or how you were taught.
Language is a living thing. It is always changing, written or verbal, it does not matter. There are no rules for how a language changes. It is changed by the users of the language as they use it.
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Cool I learned a few things today.
OK learned or Learnt?
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Learnt is what I use. It's the traditional one.
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@JaredBusch said:
They "gave way" decades ago. No matter what you think, or how you were taught.
Language is a living thing. It is always changing, written or verbal, it does not matter. There are no rules for how a language changes. It is changed by the users of the language as they use it.
There is a line, though. While that is true (for English, French does have a definition) to some degree and that is what the Oxford Dictionary is all about it is not how Americans treat it (the Websters dictionaries are about defining use before it is used, not documenting how it is used) but if you allow ANYTHING then the shortcuts that kids use today is suddenly "acceptable."
Where do you draw lines? It sounds gr8 2 call it a living language but pretty soon we ain't using a real language anymore and noone understands each other.
The problem with the pure living language theory is that you can't having proper spelling or proper grammar and communications suffers or fails. Soon ironic means coincidental and there is no word left for irony and cloud means hosted.
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@Dashrender said:
Cool I learned a few things today.
OK learned or Learnt?
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/words/learnt-vs-learned
Learned is by far the more common. Learnt, I feel, sounds better and follows the better pattern. Learned is the more common on both sides of the pond. Learnt is rare in the US, but common (just not the more common) in the UK.
