cranky_editors: CMOS Takes on the Marines

Janice (

smofbabe) wrote in

cranky_editors,
@ 2007-10-23 13:54:00

Current mood:

amused

CMOS Takes on the Marines
The online Chicago Manual of Style Q&A site takes on the US Marines:

Q. About two spaces after a period. As a U.S. Marine, I know that what’s right is right and you are wrong. I declare it once and for all aesthetically more appealing to have two spaces after a period. If you refuse to alter your bullheadedness, I will petition the commandant to allow me to take one Marine detail to conquer your organization and impose my rule. Thou shalt place two spaces after a period. Period. Semper Fidelis.

A. As a U.S. Marine, you’re probably an expert at something, but I’m afraid it’s not this. Status quo.

(Post a new comment)

	freerange_snark 2007-10-23 04:01 am UTC (link)
	I don't happen to agree with this Marine, but I have to admit that conquests in the name of grammar hold a certain appeal. How would you go about raising an editor army? (Reply to this)(Thread)

	tnh 2007-12-19 01:45 pm UTC (link)
	That would be The Big Red-Pencil One, yes? (Reply to this)(Parent)

	morwen_peredhil 2007-10-23 04:26 am UTC (link)
	If the Marines show up in their dress uniforms, I'll be so distracted that I'll probably agree to anything they say. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	xopher_vh 2007-12-14 05:38 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, I'd lie down on the bed and do anything the nice Marine tells me to! (Reply to this)(Parent)

	underpope 2007-10-23 04:49 am UTC (link)
	Wow, who would ever have thought I'd agree with the US Marines on something? Two spaces after a period was good enough for Jesus and my high school typing teacher, so it's good enough for me. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	greg_kennedy 2007-10-23 05:14 am UTC (link)
	I was taught 'two spaces after a period' for my entire K-12 experience. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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smofbabe, 2007-10-23 08:01 am UTC

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jenwrites, 2007-10-23 11:47 am UTC

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gullinbursti, 2007-10-23 12:18 pm UTC

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thatwasjen, 2007-10-23 01:15 pm UTC

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thatwasjen, 2007-10-23 01:15 pm UTC

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gullinbursti, 2007-10-23 01:19 pm UTC

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fervid_unicorn, 2007-10-23 01:38 pm UTC

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bohemianeditor, 2007-10-24 01:20 am UTC

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teal_cuttlefish, 2007-10-26 06:02 am UTC

(no subject) - (Anonymous), 2007-12-13 07:46 pm UTC

	noelleleithe 2007-10-23 11:52 am UTC (link)
	Thanks for making all editors' jobs harder there. Aren't we crabby enough as it is?? ;) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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underpope, 2007-10-23 09:01 pm UTC

	rutemple 2007-12-13 11:16 pm UTC (link)
	...and then digital typesetting came along, and neither do you have to adjust kerning pairs of letters in your proportional fonts. Because proper spacing is built into digital fonts, the "two spaces" rule is now void. Unless you only ever type on a manual typewriter, I know one person who does, and who laughs when we call it her "acoustic word processor." (Reply to this)(Parent)

	adaptor 2007-10-23 05:45 am UTC (link)
	So who's gonna tell LiveJournal? (Reply to this)(Thread)

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couchspudprotem, 2007-10-23 05:52 am UTC

	megpie71 2007-10-23 06:59 am UTC (link)
	I'd be more than happy to be able to put two spaces after a period. Unfortunately, HTML tends to take one of them away. Automagically. Bloody nuisance, it is. I still type the two spaces, of course. I figure I may as well keep up the habit. Besides, just one space looks wrong to me. (Reply to this)(Thread)

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lilactime, 2007-10-23 11:26 am UTC

	phoebesmum 2007-10-23 07:11 am UTC (link)
	I managed to train myself only to type one space after a full point in a surprisingly short space of time, considering that I'd been typing for some 30 years by the time Bill Gates (or whoever it was)decided there should be only one. But it still looks ugly, and can be confusing. (Reply to this)

Engage!

rogueeditor
2007-10-23 08:01 am UTC (link)

There are sound reasons for using only one space rather than two. You might not like the appearance, but do try to appreciate the logic. Wikipedia has a nice succinct explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop#Spacing_after_full_stop

That said, you can have your double-space option in HTML. Put a space, then (ampersand)nbsp;

One of my clients prefers this option, so on all her documents I replace two spaces with this code, and correct the occasional single space to two.
*shrugs*
It's one more "style sheet" item arguably, although current usage leans in favor of the single space.

Re: the good old "usta could" days...I don't like paying extra for speaking with a human bank teller. One teensy monthly fee was good enough for my parents and English teachers. Time marches on, and we gain extraneous illogical banking fees and lose post-period second spaces. Some days I'm not sure if we're progressing or regressing, but there you are.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: Engage! -

the_outlaw, 2007-10-23 02:12 pm UTC

Re: Engage! -

smofbabe, 2007-10-23 08:29 pm UTC

Re: Engage! -

the_outlaw, 2007-10-23 11:16 pm UTC

Re: Engage! - (Anonymous), 2007-12-13 11:34 pm UTC

Re: Engage! -

rogueeditor, 2007-12-14 04:41 am UTC

scarfish
2007-10-23 01:09 pm UTC (link)

I was taught two spaces after a period through my second year in college, when I learned that a single space after a period was journalistic style (since space matters so much in newspapers). I retrained myself to it pretty quickly, and that's now how I type everything. After a while, it seemed like that was how everyone did everything, and strangely, I don't really have any preference either way.

For some reason, though, this discussion reminds me of a former boss, who insisted that there should be a space between the last word in the sentence and an exclamation or question mark, but not a period. Drove me BATTY.

(Reply to this)(Thread)

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gullinbursti, 2007-10-23 01:21 pm UTC

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ateji, 2007-10-23 05:30 pm UTC

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scarfish, 2007-10-24 06:24 pm UTC

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rutemple, 2007-12-13 11:21 pm UTC

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scarfish, 2007-12-14 04:00 pm UTC

	eackerman 2007-10-23 01:22 pm UTC (link)
	The pen is mightier than the sword. (Reply to this)(Thread)

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the_outlaw, 2007-10-23 02:11 pm UTC

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randomstasis, 2007-10-24 12:54 am UTC

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the_outlaw, 2007-10-24 11:01 am UTC

nrc_eu
2007-10-23 02:49 pm UTC (link)

I'm into this thread way late, but I truly would like to invent some monster who would stand over my authors' keboards and whack them up the side of the head if they even THINK about inserting two spaces. --wearing my book designer hat-- The first thing I do (even before I start collapsing the bloated stylesheet) is search for two spaces and strip out one. It's a royal pain in the backside! I had to retrain my thumb to quit hitting the spacebar twice. Took a little while, but it's doable.

Ocassionally I get an author who has used the spacebar instead of the tab key. Those I'd to kill outright! Wouldn't be so bad except the indent can be anywhere from 2 to many spaces. When I get one of those, I start with a search for 10 spaces, then progressively go smaller and smaller until I've eliminated the "spacebar" indents. Sorry about the *rant* but you struck a nerve...

(Reply to this)(Thread)

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skiafoxmorgan, 2007-10-23 04:19 pm UTC

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bohemianeditor, 2007-10-24 01:23 am UTC

If you think that's bad... -

antonia_tiger, 2007-12-13 12:29 pm UTC

Only occasionally?! -

rutemple, 2007-12-13 11:30 pm UTC

nrc_eu
2007-10-23 02:51 pm UTC (link)

I'm into this thread way late, but I truly would like to invent some monster who could stand over my authors' keboards and whack them up the side of the head if they even THINK about inserting two spaces. --wearing my book designer hat-- The first thing I do (even before I start collapsing the bloated stylesheet) is search for two spaces and strip out one. It's a royal pain in the backside! I had to retrain my thumb to quit hitting the spacebar twice. Took a little while, but it's doable.

Ocassionally I get an author who has used the spacebar instead of the tab key. Those I'd to kill outright! Wouldn't be so bad except the indent can be anywhere from 2 to many spaces. When I get one of those, I start with a search for 10 spaces, then progressively go smaller and smaller until I've eliminated the "spacebar" indents. Sorry about the *rant* but you struck a nerve...

(Reply to this)

	ivorydamsel 2007-10-23 03:28 pm UTC (link)
	That's the first thing I do, too, nrc_eu: a global search-and-replace to change all double spaces to one space. Only takes five seconds, so it doesn't irk me much. However, I do it before turning on the track changes tool to avoid the extra clutter in the marked-up view. (Reply to this)(Thread)

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kip_w, 2007-12-13 09:00 pm UTC

	ateji 2007-10-23 05:32 pm UTC (link)
	I now offer myself as a sacrificial lamb: I write with one space after a period because I taught myself to write based on how things showed up in books. I didn't know about "two spaces after a period" until late in high school, but I use it solely in papers for school. (Don't kill me.) (Reply to this)(Thread)

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rutemple, 2007-12-13 11:31 pm UTC

	Caesar non est supra grammaticos lunza 2007-10-23 05:38 pm UTC (link)
	I'm old enough to remember arguing with an editor over his stubborn use of the lower-case L to make the Arabic number 1, even though his keyboard had a 1 key. I don't recall what his justification was, but ... well, let's just say he had been a good radio reporter, but was not well-equipped for a career in the print media. (Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: Caesar non est supra grammaticos -

desperance, 2007-10-28 08:40 am UTC

Re: Caesar non est supra grammaticos -

rutemple, 2007-12-13 11:35 pm UTC

Re: Caesar non est supra grammaticos -

akicif, 2007-12-17 10:55 pm UTC

	kaellem 2007-10-23 08:00 pm UTC (link)
	Ok, then, if you won't give me two spaces after a period, make the period larger so I can see where the sentence ends when I'm reading. My eyes aren't getting any younger. /end rant No, seriously, as a heavy reader I need the whitespace so my eyes don't cross when I'm reading. Two spaces after a period really helps keep all the words from running together. (Reply to this)(Thread)

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misnomer971, 2007-10-24 02:58 am UTC

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kaellem, 2007-10-24 03:20 pm UTC

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misnomer971, 2007-10-24 09:36 pm UTC

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the_outlaw, 2007-10-24 11:04 am UTC

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kaellem, 2007-10-24 03:27 pm UTC

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the_outlaw, 2007-10-24 03:30 pm UTC

	neutronjockey 2007-10-24 03:04 am UTC (link)
	From the halls of Montezuma To the shores of Tripoli, We will use bad style and grammar, In the air, on land, and sea. No ellipse,semi-colon, or umlaut, We are Oxford comma proud, We spel bad to claim the title, Of Cranky_Editor Nemises. (Reply to this)(Thread)

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smofbabe, 2007-10-24 03:26 am UTC

	The Marine is Right red_mike_yog 2007-12-13 04:30 am UTC (link)
	The Marine is right. The CMOS is wrong. Sorry about that, CMOS. Drop and give me fifty. JDM LT USN (Reply to this)(Thread)

Re: The Marine is Right -

rutemple, 2007-12-13 11:36 pm UTC

Re: The Marine is Right -

red_mike_yog, 2007-12-14 01:34 am UTC

Re: The Marine doth Write -

rutemple, 2007-12-15 08:03 am UTC

Monospace vs. Kerning Tables

wdonohue
2007-12-13 07:34 pm UTC (link)

(typesetter rant mode ON)

Monospace font on typewriter: two spaces after a period.
Monospace or any other font in an app/OS that supports font metrics/kerning tables: one space after a period.

HTML assumes it is being rendered in an environment that supports variable spacing of characters. Extra whitespace only appears in text tagged pre (deprecated) or tagged code, because you need to maintain whitespace for formatting.

You want to use two spaces in your MS Word doc? Go ahead, Word giveth two spaces, grep taketh away one.

(typesetter rant mode OFF)

(Reply to this)

zwol
2007-12-13 09:47 pm UTC (link)

I'm amazed this matters. Any typesetting software worth its salt oughta treat runs of consecutive spaces, tabs, whatever, in its input as equivalent to a single space, and then make the glue after sentence-ending punctuation a bit more stretchy than the glue between words, so that you do get a little more space there on the printed page.

(One might be able to deduce, from this position and my word choice, what I use for everything that isn't ultimately going to end up in HTML.)

(Reply to this)(Thread)

Uhhhhh, could it be...AMSTeX? -

contrafrutexus, 2007-12-16 11:44 pm UTC

Re: Uhhhhh, could it be...AMSTeX? -

zwol, 2007-12-17 01:20 am UTC

I wrote "AMSTeX" because... - (Anonymous), 2007-12-17 01:30 am UTC

Re: I wrote "AMSTeX" because... -

zwol, 2007-12-17 07:24 am UTC

	Not only does a period take two spaces... contrafrutexus 2007-12-16 11:52 pm UTC (link)
	...but parenthetical expressions within a top-level parenthetical expressions take square brackets, p.e.s within those take curly braces, and then I think it goes back to parentheses. A single Grade Six teacher said it once, thirty-five years ago, I believed it, and that settles it. Next: a short, sharp, shock of comma-usage. (Reply to this)

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