Spaces after full stops. Anyone as old as me?

I think that using the formal Dear Sir or Madam at the beginning required Yours Faithfully when signing off, Rufus.

If the correspondence continued or you had spoken to someone on the phone you could then write Dear Mr Rufus and Yours Sincerely.

Whether you meant it or not

Elegran
I started reading the thread and thought 'oh, jura's back, then realised the date.

Threads often get revived by spammers. They must scour GN for them.

I am Sir, your most Obedient Servant
Sorry about that; it should read;
"I remain Sir, your most Obedient Servant"
Conveys more the fact that I've always been your Obedient
Servant and will also continue to be so.

I never learnt to type or do shorthand but I always leave two spaces between sentences but only one between words or other punctuation marks. I think most people don't know how or when to use colons and semicolons.

Another change has been that business letters used to always end in yours faithfully
GrandmaMoira I also regret the passing of;
"I am Sir, your most Obedient Servant"
Nothing like a bit of respect, sadly no more!
OoRoo

It’s pleasing to the eye.

Like you BladeAnnie I did shorthand and typing at school in the 70's. 2 spaces after a full stop and : 1 space after a , and ;.

Double line space between paragraphs, I still remember how to centre using a manual typewriter; one back space for 2 characters or one character and one space.

A bit like riding a bike, you never forget. I can still do shorthand too, and at the age of 15 was at the time, the youngest in my school ever to pass the exam for 100 wpm
.

I was taught two spaces after a full stop and one after a comma. Shorthand and typing course 1982.

I often do a similar thing nowadays when contacting companies, whether by post, email, or even live web chat, Granny23.

Time has moved on, and many of the old forms of address are so outdated as to be laughable now!

Recently, I had to write a formal letter to a company rather than an individual and came to a halt when I was about to write "Dear Sirs". I know for a fact that the management team are both male and female. I could not think of a suitable term of address, so simply missed it out, double line spaced and started with "In response to your request........"

What would you have put?

I taught myself to touch-type as a teenager, using books from a course that my mum had done to in the '60s.
It taught two spaces after a full stop and one after a comma, but as far as I remember, that convention had gone by the time I did both typing and computer courses in the '90s, and I haven't used more than one space for either since then.

I did a shorthand/typing course in the late 1970s - it was always two spaces after a full stop and one after a comma

I'm another one who learnt to use 2 spaces at secretarial college and still do. I find it's automatic.
I'd forgotten about the centring! Indenting was beginning to die out when I started work. Another change has been that business letters used to always end in yours faithfully but no-one uses that now.

JackyB you're right - it was someone posting a link to their 'how to' website, about Google docs.

I did my secretarial training in my sixth year at Grammar School 1953/4 and I learnt the same rules as you Coolgran65 - I must admit I have stopped the indent 5 spaces at new para but it did take me some time to do that.

I thought we'd already had a long conversation on this subject - then I looked at the dates! Someone must have been bored! (Or advertising something)

I am also old school school, two spaces, no sentences starting with a conjunction, and Winston Churchill’s “this is something up with which I will not put” also springs to mind!

I am reminded of a friend whose boss, years ago, wanted it to appear that the company had the latest equipment, but would not pay for it. All correspondence had to be aligned (manually) so that the right hand margin was straight. This could only be down by putting two spaces here and there between words, let alone sentences. Needless to say she didn’t stay there for long.

It was three and two when I first started to learn, but then reduced after my first exam. Now, I can’t stop myself putting in two spaces. It’s like breathing in in between sentences.

Double spacing between paragraphs too. And if I’m handwriting I still inset the start of a paragraph.

Three and two; learned in the early sixties, and I do it now without thinking, but I don’t think it matters these days when one is lucky to see any punctuation being used at all! We were taught in school never to start a sentence with “and” or “but”. However, I confess to being guilty, recently, of doing both!

2 spaces after a full stop. Did any of you learn to touch type to the William Tell Overture. The man with the terribly posh voice telling us to 'cerriage' return.

Yes Annakist same here. Attended secretarial collage in the 60's.

I've just realised that the last posts on here were in 2019, until it was revived this morning. Sorry to Farmor518 and GrandmaKT for waking you up.

GrandmaKT The logic behind the lower case start may have been that there is a comma after "Dear Sir, " not a full stop, so it is not a new sentence.

Farmor51 It does still matter that the wording is broken up in a way that makes the structure of the wording clear and easy to read. Have you ever read (tried to read!) a paragraph of text-speak with no punctuation, and the words become completely different ones because of their spelling? It could be a new system for a new era, not the one that was previously taught, but some kind of system is needed to help the reader.

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Two spaces after a full stop. This is what I was taught at secretarial college, in the seventies!