English for India

Dear Article Authors From India,

1 Space After Every Period and Comma

Every day, 3-15 new EzineArticles.com accounts are created by someone from India.

Most grasp the English language so well in every respect except for one problematic consistent mistake:

A large majority fail to put (1) space after the period and (1) space after the comma throughout your articles.

What’s up with that?

So far, I can only count a handful of authors from India (out of almost 500+ submissions from authors in India) who know how to properly punctuate the English sentence structure with respect to (1) space after the period and comma.

If you live or work in India, please spread the word that English at all times as a language, has one space after the period and one space after a comma. Always. Always. Always. Always. Always.

Here is what a sentence would look like by the typical author from India:

If you live or work in India,please spread the word that English at all times as a language,has one space after the period and one space after a comma.Always.Always.Always.Always.Always.

Short of banning all submissions from India (crossed our mind a few hundred times due to the excessive and consistent PUNCTUATION mistakes made by authors from India), we do delete about 80% of accounts that come in from India solely based on this mistake.

We can tolerate a spelling error or a simple grammar error as most articles are not perfect, but we can’t accept articles that have no space after each period and comma.

Help us accept more articles from authors in India by always including a space after every period and comma in your sentence structure.

Thank you.

Posted by on July 13, 2005 at 9:52 am | 2,310 views

5 Comments »


1
Jack writes:

I thought there were supposed to be two spaces after a period.

-Jack (from USA)

Comment provided July 14, 2005 at 12:53 AM

[Reply]

2
Christopher M. Knight writes:

Two or One spaces are fine, but ZERO spaces after a period or comma is never the right thing.

I used to always do two spaces after the period, but then college messed me up and APA standards required 1 space after the period.

I think whichever way you go, it’s best to do one or two spaces, but be consistent.

Comment provided July 14, 2005 at 8:04 AM

[Reply]

3
Dina writes:

My Two Cents on Two Spaces or One:

Two Spaces are obsolete for both web and print. First, most fonts add a “skoche more room” after a period anyway, so the additional space isn’t needed. A font like Times New Roman squooshes some letters and stretches out others.

Second, if your design software DOES happen to allow an extra space, think of all that EXTRA space lost. You want your web copy to occupy a small area and be confined to that area. If you add an extra space, that’s twice as much space and that’s twice the SCROLL… and if you’re anti-scroll like so many web gurus, it’s no good.

Additionally: I worked in retail doing catalogs, ads, etc. We were always trying to cram as much copy as we could into little Quark text boxes. Costs less in printing and paper. Anyone who typed two spaces got a slap on the wrist. More whitespace for the perimeter, less for the text box. Looks pretty, saves room.

I think Blogger just cuts out the extra space if you type one. See? They know how it goes.

Comment provided July 14, 2005 at 9:34 PM

[Reply]

4
Priya Shah writes:

Hi Chris, Please don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater. What will I do if you ban authors form India. As one of those who punctuates well, I feel you should keep the articles pending till the corrections are made.

Comment provided July 30, 2005 at 12:36 AM

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5
Sharath writes:

I’m a freelance writer from India and I’ve been on your mailing list for a while. I can’t understand how “zero space” can be overlooked after a period. It shows up in MS Word with a red highlight. And this is something so basic, we’d learn it in pre-school. There must be some other reason. Probably happens if you cut & paste from Word into a submission window. I must explore this further.

In the meanwhile, Chris, please don’t go overboard on this.

Comment provided August 10, 2005 at 12:03 AM

[Reply]

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