Is Your Space Bar Telling Your Age?

When you type do you hit the space bar once or twice after every sentence? If you are like me and you took typing class in the 1980’s or earlier, then you have the same ingrained habit I have when it comes to overusing the space bar after periods. The old school method was to hit the space bar twice after every single period.

Well, just to mess with us old school folks and due to the advancement of technology, the new rule is to only leave one space between sentences. I don’t even think about the keyboard while I type, so breaking the habit of double clicking the space bar has been a challenge for me. Two spaces is literally a typing crime these days.

If you commit the crime of double spaces I’ve got the solution for you. To fix double spaces go to “replace” or use Control H. A pop up window will appear. In the space for, “find” you are literally going to type a period and hit the space bar 2 times. In the space for, “replace” type in a period and hit the space bar 1 time. This will find all of your dreaded double spaces and wipe them away. Make sure you double check this after all the editing and changes are done on your document. Repeat the same process for various alternate sentence endings such as question marks, exclamation marks, quote marks and so forth.

For those of you who learned to type on a typewriter, like I did, this 4 second video is for you. Caption: Woman Goes Back to Work after 30 Years.

To find more tips for writers and bloggers check out my book How to Self-Publish, The Author-preneur’s Guide to Publishing available on Kindle or in Paperback.