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Me Fail Typing? That?s Unpossible

Mrs. Werner, the gradeschool keyboarding nazi-marm of my youth, used to tell us, ?You are entering the computer age. The future for you is exciting and unknowable, but the one thing we do know is that you will all need to become skilled typists.? ¹

She uttered these and other prophetic threats (?if you do not know how to format a business letter you will never find a job, your parents will die, and you will have to beg for your food?) as she paced the rows of circi-1989 IBM computers, correcting students? posture, pointing, pecking, and giggling, and good moods. She wore white nursey soft-soled shoes, and I still remember how it felt to realize she had slipped up from behind to scrutinize me. Hell. It felt like hell.

The hell didn?t just come from Mrs. Werner?s stealth. It also came from ridiculous rules that make up a grade school keyboarding class. Rules like, ?strike the ?Z? only with the little finger on your left hand,? ?use five spaces intent the first line of each paragraph,? and most annoyingly to me, rigorous standards for the number of spaces after each sentence. Mrs. Werner said two. My instinct, gut, and stubbornness said one, two, ten, it doesn?t make a difference. It?s a space, right? What does two accomplish that one does not? And let?s face it: what is so horrible about ten that doesn?t apply to two? It?s messy? Thoughts are messy! Keyboarding is messy! I?m nine years old for heaven?s sake! As you might predict, she beat it out of me in the end, but it took longer for the itch to go away: what the hell is really so wrong with one space?

I admit that the debate over whether a sentence should be followed by one space or two may seem petty. Even if petty however, it is a debate I lost once in elementary school when Mrs. Werner broke me, and it?s a debate I lost again tonight when the internets convinced me to go back to the heathen ways of my nine-year-old self.

That?s right folks, it looks like I?ve been lost, saved, and then saved again. Tonight, I asked Google to how to make Microsoft Word stop ?correcting? the spaces after my sentences when I copy and paste. Mrs. Werner had made me into a double-tap the spacebar kind of fellow, and it bothered me that Word wasn?t adapting. But instead of a handy Word shortcut, what Google gave me was an internet assault on my pre-pubescent psychological imprinting. Two spaces, according to the world?s largest electronic brain, went out in 1947, right alongside sailor-top dresses and victory lipstick.

The rationale for double spacing, according to the internets, came from problems typesetting fixed-width fonts - problems longer relevant in the age of proportionally spaced computer-generated text. Unbeknownst to me, The Chicago Manual of Style began recommending in the mid-1970?s. So too with The Associated Press Style Book, The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, and The Gregg Reference Manual. The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers appears to poo-poo two spaces as well, because although it states that two spaces are permissible, all its examples are rendered with only one.

Of course I know I can write my damn sentences however I want ? that part of my nine-year-old spirit survives. But what about all those judges, partners, and slightly too big for their britches junior associates who will soon preside over me in professional judgment?

With my deepest apologies to Mrs. Werner, and not without a fearful peek over my shoulder, I accede. I am back to one space.

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¹ Or, "You are entering a world of pain."

Full post as published by Nuts & Boalts on January 06, 2010 (boomark / email).