Spaces after full stops. Anyone as old as me?

........or has he progressed from the quill?!!

Sparkle, me too. But what I agree very much with JRM is that organisations are single. It drives me mad hearing people say “the govt WERE....”. Grrrrr

grandMattie I think that's really debatable. Not sure anyone has ever sorted that one out.

I was taught 2 spaces after a full stop.

Does anybody remember counting the number of letters in a heading, in order to make sure that it was centred on the page? You had to know the length of the normal line of type, the length of the heading, and then do the maths required to get it in the middle of the document.

I was always taught 2 spaces after a full stop and 1 space after a comma, and definitely no starting a sentence with 'and'. I still do this when messaging and texting, it drives me up the wall but it just has to be done correctly.

Funny how some of these things vary between languages and even regions.
In French (my sometimes rusty mother tongue) I have to remind myself that they expect a space BEFORE question marks and exclamation marks. After 40+ years of using mostly English I tend to forget.
In emails from USA or Canada l've noticed that they favour a semicolon at the end of the first line of a letter, such as Dear Sir (where I would use a comma).
In Arabic, brackets (parentheses) are placed around numbers in a text, with no apparent reason to us non-Arabs. For example: My son was born in (1977).
I agree that once acquired some of these habits can be mighty hard to change.

I was taught to put two spaces after a full stop, but no mention was made of colons or semi colons. Indenting the beginning of a new paragraph was done by tabulation (remember that? Setting the tabs at the right places?) but now it's much easier with modern 'machinery'. My iPad and iPhone both put a full stop in automatically if I move up two spaces after a word, and also do an automatic capital letter at the beginning of the new sentence.

I also remember having to count the letters and spaces in a heading and doing the maths to get it dead centre.

Happy days!

Yes, definitely.

I was taught 2 spaces after a full stop and one after a comma, at secretarial school in the late 60s. Still do it even in texting. I suppose some people would say that language has to evolve and other that it's dumbing down.

Did typing in the seventies. Was taught 2 spaces after a full stop, one after a comma, two after a question mark.

I never trained, but I do know that when posting on FB or in messages on iPhone, if I put two spaces it automatically inserts a full stop!

One space after a comma, two after a full stop. About the only thing I can recall from a CLAIT course taken a long time ago!

I was taught 2 spaces after a full stop, question mark and colon and one space after a comma and semi colon. Also 2 line spaces between paragraphs if typed in the block style.

Earlier this morning, I was thinking about the days when we taught in school to place one finger on the line between words - or after a comma - and two fingers on the line after a full stop.

In typing classes (late 60s), I was also taught to do two spaces after a full stop or colon and one space after a comma or semi-colon.

I am sometimes saddened that I have become deskilled - the computer lays out and centres documents, the automatic car means no gear changing, and the washing machine tells me how long and at what temperature to wash things.

Will we become even less competent as machines take over?

As long as people continue to communicate with me, I really don't give a fig but I do remember the rigorous teaching of these things.

I learned to type in the early seventies and was taught to use two spaces after a full stop and one after a comma, etc, with double line spacing between paragraphs.

We touch typed to 'William Tell' on manual typewriters which youngsters would laugh at these days.

I lectured in English Language for some time, so i’ve spen a lot of time thinking about usage. I’ve never been taught how to type, and I’ve very rarely used a typewriter. I put one space after a full stop when I type on here.

I think it’s perfectly acceptable to begin sentences with And or But in informal writing. These things are a matter of appropriate style rather than rigid rules. Formal writing is different.

I think indenting at beginning of paragraphs has been superseded by double space. I used to indent but now just double space.

I was taught when writing hand at junior school in the 1950s to leave the space of one letter after a full stop, semi-colon, colon, exclamation mark, or question mark.

Half the space of a letter was to be left after a comma and before and after brackets.

When I learnt to type we were taught to leave two spaces after the punctuation marks listed above, except for commas, which merited a half-space.

Some typewriters had no exclamation mark, so you typed a full stop then backed up a half-space and typed an upper case vertical line.

Computer keyboards do not have a half-space, so even if we wanted to the half-space rule would be very awkward to use.

Some time before I sat my Highers in 1967, new rules for punctuation were handed out at school. Actually I think they came in gradually, because we were, aged 10, instructed to write to-day as today and to-morrow as tomorrow and various other words lost their hyphens too.

Later the rule about leaving spaces after stops disappeared, as did the rule that "which" had always to be preceded by a comma and of course, the so-called Oxford comma, which I had been taught (the comma before and) was suddenly a heinous crime.

I still object to seeing sentences like, "the colours in the Union Jack are red, white and blue" because I was taught that the sentence read, "the colours in the Union Jack are red, white, and blue"

Another rule that some publishing houses have done away with is the one I adhere to: that inverted commas around direct speech must be preceded by a comma.
She said, "I love you." Her boyfriend replied, "I love you too. Let's get hitched!"

The rule about not starting a sentence with and or but derives from earlier centuries when school teachers insisted upon it because you must never start a sentence in Latin with and or but.

Fowler rightly pointed out, or if not him, Otto Jespersen, that the rule has really no basis in English or most other modern languages.

I took commercial studies at school in 1964 and we were taught to leave 2 spaces after a full stop and colon and one after a comma and semi-colon. That is the way we had to do it in the Civil Service too where I worked for many years.

I expect someone has already pointed this out, but it’s pointless using double spaces when keying text in digitally, since the program will usually eliminate them. It was always a daft idea anyway. As a typesetter, I and my staff all had to make sure there were no double spaces in text destined for publication.

Never did shorthand but am so happy now that Grammar was so well taught in yesterdays!
I still try to adhere to what I was taught when I write articles, letters etc. Sadly, many young people today do not know how to hand write 'paper' letters - albeit, they are good at 'speed written' texts.

How about the old 'love letters?'

Good for Jacob!