Too Much Space Is Not A Good Thing

If you were taught to type on a typewriter, you were told to put two spaces after a period. And that was good advice at the time. That was the standard and helped people who were reading your material to easily discern the beginning of a new sentence, because each letter and space took up the same amount of space. It was what is called a monospaced font. If you are familiar with the Courier font, that is a monospaced font and looks like it was written using a typewriter.

But that practice is outdated. Since the advent of the computer, we have access to what is known as proportional or variable-width fonts. In other words, each letter, symbol, or space takes up a different amount of space. As such, you should NEVER put two spaces after a period. So if you are in the habit of doing that... STOP! Never do that again. It's annoying. Please and thank you.

That's my little rant for the week. But it got me thinking: are there other practices that we still engage in that are outdated and may even be counterproductive? I think of people who are giving you a web address and they start out saying, "http://www...", none of which is necessary anymore. Or people who will give you a web or email address and tell you what's capitalized. It doesn't matter - email and web addresses are not case sensitive. You're only wasting time.

Maybe there's something you do in your work, church, school, or home. It's worth considering. Usually we don't even think about them, which means we annoy others until someone points it out.