One space or two?

I don’t know if you’ve been keeping up to date on the latest controversy. No, it’s not about the Boston Marathon Bombings or Obamacare or Hillary Clinton, it’s about whether or not you should have one space or two spaces after the end of sentence. Okay, so maybe I spend a little too much time worrying about grammar. I was an English minor way back in college and some things just never change.

The “latest” word is that there should only now be one space after all end punctuation. Having two spaces is considered hopelessly old-fashioned and really dates the writer. What?

Here’s a little history lesson for you all. Way back when, when we were using typewriters to write, not computers, it was necessary to have two spaces after the end of a sentence. That’s because all characters took up the same space and it was easier to read if the end of a sentence had two spaces before the beginning of the next sentence. Supposedly today, many text is automatically adjusted, so that is not necessary. Mmm, I don’t believe that. When I write my WordPress blog posts, nothing gets automatically adjusted. When I write Word documents nothing gets automatically adjusted.

So I say, “Hogwash.” Two spaces makes it easier for me to read sentences. If that dates me, so be it. Or maybe I just need to chill out and go back to watching some Jessica Smith and Peanut videos.

So what do you think?