Old Dogs CAN Learn New Tricks
How many spaces do you put after the end of a sentence?
Chances are, if you grew in the same era as I did, the answer is two. But, that would be wrong.
I read an article a few months ago, it might have been this one, about the two space convention. It made me decide to give up the practice because, well, it's not proper and I'm all about being proper.
I learned to type in high school, er, let's just say decades ago and leave it at that. At the time, we all learned on electric typewriters and it became an ingrained (and demanded) habit. Hit a punctuation key then double tap the space bar with your thumb.
I've done a LOT of typing over the years between school, work and my own writing. Regardless of the machine (typewriter or computer) I still did that double tap.
I thought it would be really difficult to break the habit but it was surprisingly easy. I think what made it easy was the amount of IMing and texting I've done. For the former, I'm not at all about capitalization or punctuation because it's usually just short messages back and forth. For the latter, time is of the essence plus the more characters you type, the bigger the chance to hit something wrong that autocorrect will then make even more wrong.
There have been a few lapses here and there but I catch them right away (or, I assume I do) and they are immediately corrected. It may seem inconsequential but it's actually nice to type fewer characters.
Chances are, if you grew in the same era as I did, the answer is two. But, that would be wrong.
I read an article a few months ago, it might have been this one, about the two space convention. It made me decide to give up the practice because, well, it's not proper and I'm all about being proper.
I learned to type in high school, er, let's just say decades ago and leave it at that. At the time, we all learned on electric typewriters and it became an ingrained (and demanded) habit. Hit a punctuation key then double tap the space bar with your thumb.
I've done a LOT of typing over the years between school, work and my own writing. Regardless of the machine (typewriter or computer) I still did that double tap.
I thought it would be really difficult to break the habit but it was surprisingly easy. I think what made it easy was the amount of IMing and texting I've done. For the former, I'm not at all about capitalization or punctuation because it's usually just short messages back and forth. For the latter, time is of the essence plus the more characters you type, the bigger the chance to hit something wrong that autocorrect will then make even more wrong.
There have been a few lapses here and there but I catch them right away (or, I assume I do) and they are immediately corrected. It may seem inconsequential but it's actually nice to type fewer characters.
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