No space before, one space after

In my opinion, there is no space before full stop or period and we need one space after it.

My questions;

1- Is this correct?

2- Is it the same for other punctuations marks like comma, question mark, colon, hyphen, etc.

Some styles use two spaces after a period, but this is more old fashioned.

Apart from dashes -- like this -- you are correct.

SoothingDave said:

Some styles use two spaces after a period, but this is more old fashioned.
...

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Sadly true :-(. I blame the time-study men (The Pajama Game:

I am a time-study man
And a time-study man can't waste time
'Cos for a time-study man to waste time
Is a CRIME

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On a manual typewriter, a double space might take half a second (if you wait for the carriage to come to rest each time: kerchunk kerchunk). Add half a second to each sentence, and that's...

I figured it out
I figured it out
With a pencil and a pad
I figured it out.
Only five years from today
Only five years from today
I can see it
Clear as daylight
Only five years from today:
[Five years, now let me see...]...

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) That's enough from The Pajama Game.

Moving on from manual typewriters, many WYSIWYG word-processing packages won't let you put two spaces after a full-stop: you can keep hitting the space-bar until you're blue in the face, but what comes out will be a single space.

b

I first encountered it as a requirement in a report due to the US gov't. Someone had figured out that the extra white space contributed to extra pages being printed.

And you're right about software. We discussed this a while back. You can't put 5 spaces after a sentence in this forum and it will show up as one space.

SoothingDave said:

You can't put 5 spaces after a sentence in this forum and it will show up as one space.

Click to expand...

How about this? - ..........That's about ten spaces.

love-you-mom said:

In my opinion, there is no space before a full stop (or period) and we need one space after it.

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This is not an opinion. It's a rule of written English.

Is that so? One space.
Is that so? Two spaces.

5jj said:

How about this? - ..........That's about ten spaces.

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You must be magic, cause it doesn't work that way for me.

SoothingDave said:

You must be magic, cause it doesn't work that way for me.

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I cheated.

I put a row of dots and then changed the font colour to white. It's tedious, but useful sometimes.

Thank you all.


In my opinion, there is no space before a full stop (or period) and we need one space after it.

This is not an opinion. It's a rule of written English.

Click to expand...

You are right! Thanks.

I cheated.

I put a row of dots and then changed the font colour to white. It's tedious, but useful sometimes.

Click to expand...

Ha ha ha.:-D

love-you-mom said:

In my opinion, there is no space before full stop or period and we need one space after it.

My questions;

1- Is this correct?

2- Is it the same for other punctuations marks like comma, question mark, colon, hyphen, etc.

Click to expand...

1. It's not that simple. We don't leave a space if it ends a quotation, like this:


I said 'I'm going out now.'


2. It's the same for the comma, question mark, exclamation mark, colon and semicolon, but not for the hyphen or quotation marks.

Rover

5jj said:

I cheated.

I put a row of dots and then changed the font colour to white. It's tedious, but useful sometimes.

Click to expand...

Quite easy to detect if you simply select the line. Ha ha, it's not dots! You'll see the dots.

5jj said:

How about this? - ..........That's about ten spaces.

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Aha - but when you quote it, the colour betrays it, for those of you who can still see a white dot. ;-)

b