the surprisingly long life of the incorrect lesson
Professional writers and typesetters agree, two spaces after a period is wrong, and has been wrong at least since the mid 1970s when typewriter technology finally overcame the scourge of monospaced fonts.
Still, however, the “two spaces after the end of a sentence” rule has become ingrained in my head thanks to the incorrect proclamation of a teacher in either middle or high school (in the late 1980s and early 1990s) whose name is now lost to me. (there, after that last sentence, I just habitually typed two spaces after the period, and had to go back and fix it) It doesn’t matter that the lesson was wrong (or at least a decade out of date), it was relayed to me from a position of authority, and stuck with me for the last twenty years.
Twenty years of doing something completely and totally wrong, just because somebody taught me the incorrect way of doing things, and I never thought to question it. Imagine that.
Remember this, everyone: ANYTHING you say to ANYONE at ANY TIME can have far-reaching effects on shaping that person’s behavior. This is apparently humanity’s most common superpower. Do not use this power lightly.
[…] the surprisingly long life of the incorrect lesson […]
December 30th, 2011 at 11:10 AM