DP Canada Forums

Kahlan · Joined: 18 Jul 2010 Posts: 2

Hi. I'm new here so nice to meet everyone!

I have looked through the proofreading guidelines and the forum topics, but still cannot located the answer I need. I could be missing it, but I did look.

Anyway, when proofing should we put two spaces between sentences in the same paragraph? Doing the beginners pages for Tom Thumb, I have noticed that all the sentences for the copy we are proofing, have only one space between the end of one sentence and the start of the next. However, the scanned version we are supposed to refer too seems to have two spaces between each sentence within the same paragraph.

Anyone please?

Scribe · Joined: 11 Nov 2009 Posts: 181 Location: England

....only one space is required. I think what you see on the scan is the 'old fashioned way'.In fact Ithink later software removes extra spaces unless they are specifically requested by the formatters......welcome! Laughing

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Kahlan · Joined: 18 Jul 2010 Posts: 2

Many thanks for the help and the welcome! Very Happy

Long Green · Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 12:20 pm Post subject:

Two spaces after a period may be "old fashioned" [and for DP-C and DP, Scribe's response is correct] but it is a much better way and real books still use it. Otherwise, there is no way to distinguish an abbreviation-ending period and one used for the end of a sentence or one with both uses. This evolved, I think, from the inability of early word-processing programs to distinguish between these two uses of a period. A similar thing is happening at newspapers in regards to correct hyphenization of words divided across lines. It's being accepted by the public that a word can be divided anywhere, so it is becoming more common, even in papers which used to use good form.

Being polite is also "old-fashioned" now-a-days and also seems to be going out of style. Sad

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Long Green · Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 12:24 pm Post subject:

And, yes, a big Welcome to DP-Canada. [I don't know why I was unable to edit my above post. ]
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