My reply was a bit facetious, because this ‘Scott’ character came off as a bit of a pompous arse. It seemed he was claiming that the double-space was the be-all and end-all to legibility and intelligibility (how I love that word).

And yet, he didn’t seem to realise that the double-space is purely a typewriter thing. If they are properly setting and printing formal documents, they shouldn’t be using typewriter workarounds, but the proper typographical units—they’re there for a reason!

Personally, I’m just fine with single-spaces after sentence-delimiters; but if he wants to be ‘traditionalist’ and preserve the old extra spacing between sentences, he should do so using the proper tools that are now, in the age of computer typesetting, so readily available. Using an app like InDesign or Quark (I’m assuming about Quark here, since I don’t use it myself), setting a simple keyboard shortcut for an em space is a simple task.

David, if you’ll accept Wikipedia as a reliable source, its article on French spacing provides at least somewhat of one for the evolution of intersentential spacing.

The double-space is only a ‘lazy’ workaround inasmuch as the typewriter makers were ‘lazy’ (or perhaps rather economical) in the layout of their keyboards, not including an option for an em space. And to be annoying in the same way that ‘Scott’ was annoying by calling the single-space style lazy.

Edit: Bugger. I seem to be habitually antisocial in this thread. My posts simply refuse to be on the same page as the posts I’m replying to.

Double-edit: Oh, and Nanna: if I have the choice, I think I’ll settle for being hung at dawn, rather than hanged.

To all posters who pay no attention to lower/upper case and punctuation when posting. You never know when spelling and typing mistakes will betray you in real life too: http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/world/2008/08/13/D92HIG1O0_iran_interior_minister/index.htm

....in the certificate, "entitled" is misspelled "intitled," and it says Kordan was granted the degree "to be benefitted from its scientific privileges."

The clumsily worded document says Kordan "has shown a great effort in preparing educational materials and his research in the domain of comparative law,that has opened a new chapter,not only in our university,but, to our knowledge,in this country" -- leaving out spaces after all but one of the commas. ...

Wellatleastheleftafewspacessincewithoutspacesseparatingindividualwordsitis ...

Nanna

Operation Gold Seal in the United States uncovered one fake degree mill that sold diplomas and degrees to more than 9000 buyers with total sales exceeeding US$7 million.

Analysis of buyers by country and the names of the insitutions that appear on the fake certs: http://www.hep.uiuc.edu/home/g-gollin/pigeons/SRUCourt/Govt_Exhib_A.doc

List of buyers in alphabetical order: http://www.spokesmanreview.com/data/diploma-mill/
The winner: USA.

“The data show a sharp rise in sales in March 2003, when revenues soared past $50,000
per month for the first time.”

Pause and effect

The quiet generosity of the semicolon

The quote, from a speech Emerson gave at the centennial observance of the Concord fight in 1875, had been printed with a semicolon in the local paper and in the town's official record of the proceedings: "The thunderbolt falls on an inch of ground; but the light of it fills the horizon." But Davis - not wanting to see an error carved in stone - asked if a comma would be better.

I liked the formality of the semicolon, and the way it echoed biblical lines like the ones from Ecclesiastes (as punctuated in the Authorized Version): "All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full." Or "Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity."

This sense was reinforced when I read more of Emerson's speech, where other semicolons kept this one company: "The British instantly retreated," his paragraph continued. "We had no electric telegraph; but the news of this triumph of the farmers over the King's troops flew through the country, to New York, to Philadelphia, to Kentucky, to the Carolinas, with speed unknown before, and ripened the colonies to inevitable decision."

Emerson's semicolon isn't required, and later versions of the line often use a comma. The Chautauquan, in fact, revised Emerson's lines even more thoroughly and bombastically in 1897: "The thunderbolt falls on an inch of ground but the light of it fills the horizon. The British instantly retreated!"

But I voted for the semicolon, and that's what the marker has. So my recommendation for a National Punctuation Day outing - for semicolon fans within range - is a visit to the Old North Bridge, to honor both Emerson's semicolon and your freedom to use it where less daring punctuators might make do with a modest comma.

And what does a comma do, a comma does nothing but make easy a thing that if you like it enough is easy enough without the comma. A long complicated sentence should force itself upon you, make you know yourself knowing it and the comma, well at the most a comma is a poor period that lets you stop and take a breath but if you want to take a breath you ought to know yourself that you want to take a breath. It is not like stopping altogether has something to do with going on, but taking a breath well you are always taking a breath and why emphasize one breath rather than another breath. Anyway that is the way I felt about it and I felt that about it very very strongly. And so I almost never used a comma. The longer, the more complicated the sentence the greater the number of the same kinds of words I had following one after another, the more the very more I had of them the more I felt the passionate need of their taking care of themselves by themselves and not helping them, and thereby enfeebling them by putting in a comma.
So that is the way I felt about punctuation in prose, in poetry it is a little different but more so …

— Gertrude Stein
from Lectures in America 

Originally written by Liliana Boladz-Nekipelov on December 13, 2008 7:18 PM I almost never used a comma. ... So that is the way I felt about punctuation in prose.… — Gertrude Stein

Not in legal prose...

See Post #135200 on the comma war.

Mark my words, and his, and hers

Lionel Shriver, author of "The Post-Birthday World" and other novels, has an essay in today's Wall Street Journal about the missing quotation marks in modern fiction. Someone must have issued a memo, she writes, saying "Cool writers don't use quotes in dialogue anymore." [...]

http://www.utne.com/GreatWriting/Down-with-the-Em-Dash-Long-Live-the-Semicolon-Gordon.aspx?utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email

Writers overuse the em-dash—that all too convenient of punctuation marks. By employing the em-dash too often—whether out of laziness or a lack of creativity—they neglect the simple pleasures of the semicolon. Lionel Shriver writes for Standpoint:

These days, the semicolon exudes an aura of the fusty, the fastidious, and the defunct; of mildewed stacks, tight hair buns, and prissily sharpened pencils; of hesitancy, diffidence, and uncertainty, in contrast to the em-dash, which exudes a spirit of strength, flair, and decisiveness.