(no subject)

[doyle]

I spent all today doing my RSA stage 2 word processing exam, which consists of proving you can press those square buttony things on the keyboard and magically make stuff happen on the screen omg! I've found myself really limited in the amount of temp jobs I can do without it, so I finally caved and paid the £180. I felt a bit stupid at finding out pernickety stuff I genuinely did not know, like putting two spaces after a full stop. I thought that went out with manual typewriters. The examiner's horrified look suggested this is a breach of word processing etiquette on par with going to a fancy dinner party and using your fish slice to indecently assault the host while whistling the theme to The Magic Roundabout.

Still, I hope I passed. The NSPCC didn't faff about making me put double spaces in; my interview there mainly consisted of "do you know what one of these computer thingummies does? Are you likely to have a breakdown if you have to type up sexually explicit material? Good, help yourself to enough tea to make any reasonable person explode." (Social workers drink a lot of tea. It is one of many interesting scientific facts I learned in the six months I worked there.)

My mother just shouted up the stairs to inform me that "the wee boy with the glasses" is on TV. Harry Potter? The Milky Bar kid? I am going to investigate.

Comments

[panloaf.livejournal.com]

It's mainly to do with typewriters, but also to do with the font used. Most fonts designed for computers are designed with using single spaces these days (particularly in the case of web-pages). The main reason for the double-space is simply readability. If you are providing copy for someone else to typeset, it is often preferred without the double-space, as they will account for the additional spacing. If you're simply typing a letter using a serif font, though, double-spacing after a full stop breaks up the text enough so the reader doesn't feel like they're trying to read a solid block of letters. Problem is, letter-writing "styles" can change with fashion in the same way as fonts.
Course, you can always tell those who complain when you use the RSA methods to sod off and learn short-hand...
(and in most sites I work on, if I'm using a small block font, I do still use the double-space rule because it breaks the text up nicely).