Oh, look you know, I flit between the two types. I see the option as another tool in my repertoire to make life easier for those reading the documentation. Sometimes I find it helps in certain types of technical documentation that will require skimming for titbits or portions of information; you know, a sentence amongst many about a particular configuration setting, that an engineer may want to know or refresh their memory about. Two spaces helps separate sentence beginnings from title case wording mid sentence. I have found slight - no, 'subtle' is a better choice - differences in the response people have to one or two spaced sentence starts in sample paragraphs at times. This is especially the case where there is a plethora of title cased wording forced into paragraphs by company policy about naming things. Two spaces also helps to differentiate sentence starts when certain fonts have periods that are vague on-screen and or have printed badly. So do what seems best. Two spaces can be set as default on MS Word and maybe you should defer to that? Mainly the trick is to be consistent about it. I will go as far to say that you may decide to use two spaces in one section and not in other sections of a document. The "rules" (which pedants on this list try to hide behind btw - demonstrating their own personality deficiencies more than their technical knowledge) say you should only use one space. I defer to the Chicago Manual of Style regularly, but it is a guideline, not necessarily the absolute. Hey, does it really matter? wjlewington@xxxxxxxxxx WJL Consulting. PO Box 404, Liverpool, NSW Australia, 1871 www.wjl.com.au <http://www.wjl.com.au/> Phone/facsimile: +61 2 9876 5345 Mobile/cell phone: +61 0408 612 752 -----Original Message----- From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rhonda Bracey Sent: Friday, 18 January 2008 18:14 To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: atw: Re: Extra spacing after full stop I just did a Google search for "one space or two" and got some 11,000 hits... so there's plenty out there to support whichever way you go. As you noted, Chicago says one, and the Australian Style Manual (6th edition, p117) also recommends a single space after punctuation such as commas and full stops--they insist on it after colons and semicolons. If your organisation is using Word, you can get the 'double space' users to set Word so that it converts two spaces after punctuation in to one (in Word 2003 go to Tools > Options > Spelling & Grammar tab, then click Settings in the Grammar section and change the settings in the "Require" group; you can also force a serial comma this way too). This question goes around almost all tech writing lists every few years and invariably results in list wars, so be warned... Rhonda Rhonda Bracey rhonda.bracey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.cybertext.com.au <http://www.cybertext.com.au/> AuthorIT Certified Consultant _____ From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of O'Connor, Deirdre [Beacon Technology] Sent: Friday, 18 January 2008 4:01 PM To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: atw: Extra spacing after full stop Can anyone provide a yes/no answer to the question of whether extra spacing between sentences should/shouldn't be used in Manual/Guideline/Standard type documentation? I find many professionals use two spaces after each full stop and as a Technical Writer this bothers me. After researching it (Chicago Manual of Style and various Google pages) I have found that it is not correct practice. Chicago Manual of Style: "2.12 Line spacing and word spacing For the hard copy, the entire text and, if possible, all extracts, notes, bibliography, index, and other material should be vertically double-spaced. A single character space, not two spaces, should be left after periods at the ends of sentences (both in manuscript and in final, published form) and after colons." I am writing up a Formatting Guide for my company and I would like to state that extra spacing should not be used as common practice but I would just like any other opinions/facts on this please. Thanks.