On Wednesday, 4 April 2018 19:12:23 BST Wol's lists wrote: > On 02/04/18 21:50, Philip Webb wrote: > > 180402 Dale wrote: > >> After each period at the end of a sentence, I put in two spaces, not one. > >> Something I was taught years ago somewhere and still do. > >> I only put one after a comma tho. > > > > That is correct professional secretarial style, which I always follow too. > > I was taught to always start every paragraph with an indent. Which I > believe is against "professional secretarial style".
There seem to be two alternative styles: either indent the start of a paragraph, or leave a blank line before it. I learned at an early age that an indent marked a new para (not some empty space that usually just happened to be left at the end of the line before) - I remember arguing that point at primary school, some time in 1952 - 1954. On the other hand, some "designer" has decided since then that spacing paras out presents a cleaner appearance to the page, regardless of legibility. And of course, appearances count more than substance. Bad ideas are just as infectious as good ones. > Different horses, different courses. I believe the indent was dropped to > save a keystroke, so why the double-space is there (requiring an extra > keystroke) I don't know. That's been explained already, as dating from the days of mechanical, monospaced typewriters. Well, it seems plausible to me anyway. > And why use secretarial style when you're typesetting? One is for > letters, the other is typically for books ... that's the trouble with > all this Artificial Stupidity - it blindly enforces rules that are > irrelevant (or even wrong!!!) for the current scenario. Indeed, and that's more-or-less how I see the usual American insistence on a comma before the "and" before the last item in a list, even though it gets in the way and introduces ambiguity - the infamous Oxford comma. But that's a whole new can of worms. -- Regards, Peter.
