If, however, you want to look, through your writing, like a somewhat educated person, you'll adopt what is essentially unanimously the typographic standard (across all styles).
Spoken like a truly biased person. You yourself admit that nobody's coming out and saying that it's wrong... except you, who imply it through some very blunt means that you find it unintelligent and sloppy. Furthermore, your examples are completely irrelevant, as they're examples of
inefficiency, not a stylistic preference. Pressing the space bar a second time takes, what, a fraction of a second? That's not "inefficient" in any countable sense. Double-spacing after a period makes for cleaner text and improves readability. The only reason that it exists is to conserve space where size matters (such as a newspaper) or on the Internet where grammatical rules fall apart anyway. Only a truly lazy person, or a petulant non-conformist (remember, this is
Marril talking) would see it as any marked improvement, because there is no "improvement" to be had. If anything, I'd say double-spacing is
more efficient, as there are cleaner distinctions between punctuation. Simply comparing two copies of the same text, one with double-spaced periods and one without, should be enough.
As I've said before, it's comparable to the difference between "color" and "colour." It's actually pretty much exactly the same in all physical respects, as it's a single extra keystroke for a difference that's entirely arbitrary. The only difference is that spelling differences are localized (Canada, the UK, and Australia spell it one way, and America another), whereas double-spacing after a period is not. For that matter, it's the same as seperating the final list entry with a comma (e.g. "Bob, George, Bill, and Margaret" vs "Bob, George, Bill and Margaret"). Even over time, the "inefficiency" is so small compared to the actual time spent that it's completely insignificant to lose. I won't commit any logical fallacies and therefore accuse you of being against spelling it "colour," but it is a parallel you should take note of.
The difference between you and I is that you seem to think you look educated simply because you single-space after a period. You're entitled to think that. However, I
know I look educated because I speak intelligently, with relevant examples and non-abusive arguments.
Why the spam, dude?
I do love Mooninites, but....
Read the post directly above it.
