Sentences: Double or Single Space?

[rocketpig]

Final-Fan said:

If all you want to do is fall back on "it's an arbitrary standard imposed by typographers and sensible people fall in line" then go do that.  This guy [edit:  apparently someone else I saw] says typists see it differently, but they aren't the ones that get to print it. 

Although, if double spaces ARE necessary for some typefaces why should we have two standards instead of one? 

Because some typefaces are different than others. Unless you're using Courier (such as my lawyer girlfriend HAS to use for court documents), there is no bloody reason to use two spaces. Modern fonts have elminated the need.

And standards put in place by copy editors and typographers are not "arbitrary". There is a valid reason to use one space and you just want to ignore it for the sake of ignoring it. So be it, I really don't care. On the other hand, if I received a resume with double spacing, I'd probably reject it unless it was outstanding in every other way. People need to be able to type in a standardized format for my job and if they can't bother to learn with is the modern and most commonly used rule for copy writing, I'd question their overall capacity to do the job.

And as for that guy saying "typists see it differently", I have guide books at home written by copy editors and copy writers. Do you know what they say? Use one space. Unlike purely hypothesizing and saying "people I know prefer two spaces" like that link does, you can go to your local library, pick up any number of non-scientific or field-specific books (which have all sorts of crazy rules) and you'll find that every last one of 'em says to use one space except when using a mono spaced font.

Anyway, I'm done with this. There are stacks of evidence that say to use one space and a few whackjobs that say to use two. I'm going to keep using one space because if I ever designed a site or brochure with two spaces, best case scenario is that the client would laugh and ask me to fix it, worst case is that they'd shake their head and never hire me again for not knowing one of the most basic rules of typography. And that's the difference. You want to argue about this for no apparent reason while I have to write for a living and actually produce typed material that other people look at and read.