Not Everything Needs to be Efficient

Yesterday at work I had the job of editing a letter that was going out to some of our donors.  While editing this letter, I thought something looked strange.  After a few reads of the letter, I realized that there was only one space after every period.  So I took the extra time to add an extra space and sent the letter off for signatures and to be sent out.  Thought that was the end of it.

Later on in the break room, I was chatting with a couple of the other administrative assistants, and made some comment about having to add a space after every period to a letter.  One of the other admins said "oh, well just be lucky you weren't dealing with a two-spacer."  A "two-spacer?"  I was dumbfounded.  Aren't we all "two-spacers?"  It's not even something I think about.  I remember taking keyboarding in high school.  Heck, I even took part in a district typing competition through FBLA - as if the ability to type fast somehow helps you become a future business leader.  In fact, I'd say the faster you type, the more likely that your job probably entails typing something for someone who makes two to three times as much as you make as they sit behind their desk with their feet up tossing a football in the air while they dictate to you on speakerphone.  But I'm getting off subject.  The point is, there's no way I would've finished second in that competition if I'd been a single spacer.  Those were counted as errors back then. 

A quick Google search however shows that I'm probably wrong.  In fact, some articles (like this incredibly snarky one) mock two-spacers as if we're morons.  This is like calling people 500 years ago stupid for believing the world was flat.  That's what they'd been taught.  You could make the same case for the remnants of racism in the South or cockfighting in the Caribbean or a multitude of other things that people find "wrong" but are simply learned behaviors passed down from generation to generation, sometimes for hundreds of years.  With the benefit of decades of hindsight, it's easy to look back at these things and say "my goodness, people were BARBARIANS." 

I don't mean to compare slavery to typing an extra space after a period... obviously one is abhorrent behavior, while the other is merely a matter of aesthetics.  Even though the past 24 hours have enlightened me to the differences between monospaced fonts and proportional fonts, I still prefer the look of the double space.  It's what I'm used to.  I don't see the extra space as "acres of empty space on a page" as some of these articles suggest.

Perhaps the most absurd argument of the single-spacers is this crazy notion that it's "inefficient" to use that extra space.  How much time do you save by omitting the double-tap of the spacebar?  maybe two-hundredths of a second?  Maybe less?  Good on you saving a second every forty sentences you type.  After typing a whole college term paper, you've saved yourself roughly enough time to take an extra sip of your Red Bull.  This is even more annoying than the people who pass me for going the speed limit on Highway 20 between Corvallis and Albany.  You realize there's three stop lights coming up that I'm going to make up the 22 seconds you saved by going 62 instead of 55 right? 

I surveyed my wife about this, she was flabbergasted that one-spacing was even a thing.  "What's next, are we going to start accepting people writing in text-message language as acceptable business practices because it's more efficient?" she bellowed.  I think she might've been more upset about this revelation than I was.  But we were both in agreement - not everything has to be about efficiency.

I'm always blown away at the number of misspellings and omitted words people send off in professional emails and letters.  I know that I've been guilty of this, and every time I'm ashamed of myself for not taking the time to proofread or just flat out pay attention to what I'm writing.  Yet we live in a society where things keep getting faster and smaller.  Attention spans are shrinking at the same rate cell phones have over the past two decades (though with the rise of people using their phones as portable home theaters, the size of phones is starting to trend the other way.  Before too long those belt clips are going to be replaced by shoulder straps so you can wear your phone as a backpack - because you're going to need that 22" screen to watch an episode of Downton Abbey on your lunch break or sneak in a game or two of Candy Crush while on the toilet.)  Think about how many times someone has screwed up your fast food order because they were trying to get your Whopper Jr. to you in under a minute - Wouldn't you gladly wait an extra 25 seconds to ensure that they left off the ketchup and added the extra pickles you requested?  Nothing's worse than getting super excited because that fast food bag is hanging out of the window as you drive up, only to get home and realize you're going to be scraping mustard off your bun and no matter how hard you scrape, your mouth is still going to be raped by that awful taste. 

So where do all of you fall on this debate?  Were you taught the spacebar double-tap as I was?  Have you converted to single spacing?  Is this something our kids will wrinkle their noses at and say "They seriously taught you THAT?"