It was proper in the olden days.

"Sentences have one spacebar character following the
period, not two. Please. You type a single spacebar
character after a comma, after a colon, and after a
semi-colon, dont you? Well, periods, exclamation points
and question marks are just the same. Dave Siegels web
site at http://www.dsiegel.com/ is worth visiting; he has
thoughtful and helpful things to say about Internet page
design. Heres what Dave has to say about it:

"... Putting two spaces between sentences is an old
secretarys myth. While it wont affect your web pages, it
makes your e-mail and word-processor documents harder to
read. One of the first things you learn in a good typography
class is that a word space should be about the width of the
letter i. The extra space breaks the natural rhythm of the
sentences. You dont do it in your handwriting, we never do
it in books and newspapers, why should it be right for your
word processor or your e-mail? It isnt. Even if you are
using a fixed-width font, the period itself has quite a bit
of white space, enough to distinguish it and the following
word space from a regular word space. More space makes the
sentences float apart, making life difficult for the reader,
no matter what your typing teacher taught you. Since we
typographers are very picky about such things, if a larger
space were helpful, we would use it. "

http://www.austlit.com/a/styleguide.html

Elaine

The old believe everything; the middle-aged suspect
everything; the young know everything. --Oscar Wilde

Hello Tom

On Thursday, February 3, 2005, you wrote

> I always thought that putting two spaces after a period at
> the end of a sentence was proper structure.  I think there
> are two english teachers on this list and perhaps they can
> comment on this.  I'd be interested in hearing what is correct.

> Tom

> ** Original Message From: Hugh Vandervoort **
>>I've never heard of leaving two spaces between sentences, 
>>and I've never seen it in a web page.  Where can I get some
>>info on that?
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