A Business Communications course teaches you how a business document such as a letter, resume, essay, memo, etc., should be formatted. This includes such items as whether to insert the beginning of a paragraph, when to indent the whole paragraph, when to use quotes, italicize, etc.
One of these items is the number of spaces after a period. When I grew up using a manual typewriter and even an electric typewriter we put two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence. There is only one after Mr. or Mrs.
That has changed, although unless you have taken a Business Communications course lately you probably don't know that. Today we only have one space after a period at the end of a sentence.
Reason
In the good old days the Courier font was not proportional. What that means is that each letter took up the same amount of space no matter how wide or thin it was. An "I" was given the same amount of space as a "W". You can see that that would be a problem - all that blank white space around the I. With all those white areas it was hard to pick out sentences easily. The second space made it easier.
All fonts today are proportional. We don't need the two spaces. An unnecessarily waste of space.
I wonder also if they are trying to save paper by only using one space. In a long document that might save a page or two. So we are doing our part to help the environment?!
Show / Hide
How do we know if there is two spaces or one behind the period?
We use the Show / Hide command located on the Home tab.
From anywhere in the document
1. Click on the Home tab, if it isn't already visible.
2. In the Paragraph section. Click on the backwards P, called the Paragraph symbol.
Your document now looks a little busy. Every time you have hit the Enter key the Show / Hide paragraph symbol appears.
There are little dots between words. Each one represents when the space bar was hit.
Find the end of a paragraph, How many dots or spaces are after the period?
Delete any extra ones.
One of these items is the number of spaces after a period. When I grew up using a manual typewriter and even an electric typewriter we put two spaces after the period at the end of a sentence. There is only one after Mr. or Mrs.
That has changed, although unless you have taken a Business Communications course lately you probably don't know that. Today we only have one space after a period at the end of a sentence.
Reason
In the good old days the Courier font was not proportional. What that means is that each letter took up the same amount of space no matter how wide or thin it was. An "I" was given the same amount of space as a "W". You can see that that would be a problem - all that blank white space around the I. With all those white areas it was hard to pick out sentences easily. The second space made it easier.
All fonts today are proportional. We don't need the two spaces. An unnecessarily waste of space.
I wonder also if they are trying to save paper by only using one space. In a long document that might save a page or two. So we are doing our part to help the environment?!
Show / Hide
How do we know if there is two spaces or one behind the period?
We use the Show / Hide command located on the Home tab.
From anywhere in the document
1. Click on the Home tab, if it isn't already visible.
2. In the Paragraph section. Click on the backwards P, called the Paragraph symbol.
Your document now looks a little busy. Every time you have hit the Enter key the Show / Hide paragraph symbol appears.
There are little dots between words. Each one represents when the space bar was hit.
Find the end of a paragraph, How many dots or spaces are after the period?
Delete any extra ones.
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