British English & Why I Hate Double Spaces

Cat:Lang | Cat:Grammar

Posted: 22nd of October, 2024

I know I just had a grammar rant, but that was exactly two weeks ago and I have more stuff to share. I write in a mix of British and American English. This is mainly because I prefer spelling in British English, but sometimes I can't remember words exactly or my muscle memory takes over, resulting in sentences like, "I went to the grey-coloured center." In this sentence, both "grey" and "colour" are in British English (BE, from now on), but "center" is in American English (AE, from now on). This is not only a strange sight, but inconsistent and confusing for both me, and perhaps even other readers. I do try to fix mistakes like this, but sometimes they fall through. This is also an issue in documents, such as grammar assignments in school (yes, I do attend a school). I am unaware if BE is accepted here in the United States of America, however, I still use it. BUT, if I KNOW I can't remember a certain word in BE, I am FORCED to turn EVERY BE word into its AE counterpart so it's consistent. This... just kinda sucks and is an overall inconvenience. I don't want to overreact.

Anyway, since this rant is already about grammar, and I don't want to make another one purely for my double space hate, I'll write it here as well.

I hate double spaces. They're inconsistent and make it look like you don't care about what you're writing. Double spaces (DS from now on) are fine if you use them consistently, though. This means adding a DS after a full-stop, as I know some people prefer that, is fine, as it is consistent and usually accepted. You can also be weird and place a DS in between every word instead of a singular space, this looks really weird, but is consistent, I guess. These examples are fine.

But...

Placing a DS in the middle of a sentence looks bad and wrong. Let's take that sentence from earlier and place a double space in it. I'll give it its own line because of how text is formatted.

"I went to  the grey-coloured centre."

There's a DS in between "to" and "the". That looks so bad, it shows that consistency in your writing is not a priority, and, to a certain extent, makes it look like you didn't proofread it. I'll give the benefit of the doubt to people who can't see well, or are writing quickly, as that's obviously a minor error in situations like those. But PLEASE, even if its a quick sentence, look it over for any double spaces.

(Also, while writing this, I misspelled "consistent" as "consistant" numerous times.)