Never Make These Mistakes. Ever!

These things drive me crazy:

• Two spaces after a period, and
• Tabs used to indent paragraphs.

I do a lot of editing and unfortunately there are many who think that the folks who have developed word processing software haven’t figured out a way to code these formatting conventions that we used to have to do manually when we were pounding away on 175-pound Underwoods.

If you’re still doing these things, stop now. You’re aging yourself and causing an editor to use some global search and replace routines.

I regularly edit the work of one guy whose first paragraph is properly indented via the ruler settings in the software. However, for every paragraph after that he uses a tab. Somehow he is losing the ruler, which is smart enough to know what to do if he would just leave it alone.

The double spaces after periods really stick out to me now. When I look at a web page with this abomination, it’s like looking at a moth-eaten sweater. Or even worse, it reminds me of the time in my youth when I had met a very nice looking girl and we were eating lunch. She bit into a hard roll and a crown or cap on a front tooth popped off.

Not so pretty anymore.

If you are persisting with these typographic travesties, break the habits. If you aren’t, please help me spread the word so we can end this madness.

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Image: “Metal movable type” by Willi Heidelbach. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons.