i have to laugh at the blanket statement that "two spaces isn't visually appealing" - it probably has much more to do with what you're used to than anything else. what's so unappealing about 2 spaces?

Who needs the extra keystroke?

Twenty-five, and I use 2 spaces. However, I don't use "en" dashes... I suppose I could assign a hotkey.

Twenty-five, and I use 2 spaces. However, I don't use "en" dashes... I suppose I could assign a hotkey.

If you seperate a clause with dashes--like this--you're suppose to use the "em" dash, which is the width of an "m" (although when you don't have access to one, like here, you can use a double dash like I have). When you say, e.g., "I'll be gone July 4th-July 9th," you use an "en" dash, which is longer than a hyphen and shorter than an "em" dash.

En dash: Alt+0150
Em dash: Alt+0151

Oh, and learn to use ellipsis, people. It's not three periods.

Yes it is.

Analogously, in printing and writing, the term refers to the row of three dots (…) or asterisks (* * *) indicating such an intentional omission. This punctuation mark is also called a suspension point, points of ellipsis or colloquially, dot-dot-dot

There is no such thing as a "four-dot ellipsis." A period followed by an ellipsis may look like four dots, but they are two separate entities.

Most programming languages require the ellipsis to be written as a series of periods; a single ellipsis character cannot be used.

I don't give out expert advice on Dungeon Mastery, so you should probably stay out of Typography.

They put two spaces after periods, people born in the computer age don't.

They still use editing shorthand, most people born in the computer age don't.

They put two spaces after periods, people born in the computer age don't.

They still use editing shorthand, most people born in the computer age don't.

They are not so lazy to be intentionally grammatically incorrect.

I'm turning twenty-one next week and I double space between sentences. Mostly because English, grammar, spelling, et al. is my forte. I hope to get a job with the grammar police someday.

In the old days of typewriters using only monospaced fonts in which a period occupied as much horizontal space as any other letter, it was standard to double-space after each one to clearly separate out each sentence from the following one. However, when justified, variable-width type is set for printing it has always been standard to use only one space between sentences. Modern computers produce type that is more like print, and most modern styles call for only one space after a period. This is especially important if you are preparing a text for publication which will be laid out from your electronic copy. If you find it difficult to adopt the one-space pattern, when you are finished writing you can do a global search-and-replace to find all double spaces and replace them with single spaces.