Thursday, July 23, 2009

Punctuation, Style Guides, and Rules

Our dear friend Rachel wrote a few months ago with this question: "OK - here it is - how many spaces between sentences - one or two? At work they insist it is two (and it was two when I was in high school), but when I go to publish scientific literature it is one. Who is right?"

Well, Rachel, they both are right. Bad answer, huh?

Here's the longer answer:

Academic, scientific, and news publications all have writing style guides that they use. These vary widely. Most of us are taught writing in high school English classes, and those classes use MLA, or the Modern Language Association, standards. MLA calls for two spaces between sentences. But there are many other standards out there (below I've included links to some of the more popular style guides). On top of that, many journals modify a particular style to their own requirements. I just recently submitted an article for publication in an archaeology journal and ran into the same problem as you, Rachel. I am MLA trained and have yet to get used to the styles used in the archaeology world (here is a hint: use the Microsoft "Find and Replace" option when you are done writing to change two spaces, ". ", to one space ". " It saves a ton of time!).

It is one of those frustrating realities that, for each place that you write, you will need to adhere to its requirements. No one is right and no one is wrong. Typically, though, most people are used to two spaces. I suspect many publications go with one space to save space in their journals.

Here are links to three of the more popular style guides:

MLA: The Modern Language Associate does not offer a free version online, but the OWL (Online Writing Lab) at Perdue has some of the material available on their fabulous website: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/

APA: The website for the American Psychological Associate has a lot of helpful information on this commonly used style: http://www.apastyle.org/

Chicago: The Chicago Manual of Style also has a very useful online site: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/home.html

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