Much of what lawyers think of as "proper" typesetting and formatting is derived from the limitations of typewriters. For example, it was necessary to put two spaces between sentences back in the days when typefaces were monospaced (= like this one). Because there was so much white space between the letters, the sentences needed some extra delineation. However, with proportional typefaces (like this one) sentences only require one space.
Lawyers and law review editors will swear up and down this is heresy. Well, fuck you. You're wrong. Show me one publication, book, newspaper that puts two spaces between sentences. It's okay. I'll wait. Zzzz. Hey, you're back! What, you couldn't find one? NO SHIT.
In the meantime, another bugaboo of the typewriter era is double-spaced text. Again, this is an artifact of the monospaced type days. To fit a reasonable amount of text on a line using monospaced type, you had to use small left & right margins. But to keep the page from being grotesquely dense in the vertical direction, you'd double-space the lines.
This is an atrocious habit to continue in the computer age. With proportional fonts, it spreads text out unnecessarily wide, making it difficult to read. Again, find me one magazine, newspaper, book, blog, or law review article that is double-spaced. Again, I'll wait.
Okay, you didn't find one. That's because it doesn't exist. Because it sucks and it's ugly. Think how annoyed you are, reading this double-fucking-spaced text. You are practically begging me to single-space my type again because this is making you want to claw out your eyeballs.
Now if you have a good answer why, year after year, law professors demand papers be double-spaced, I'm all ears. You may say it's to impose uniformity, as in "the paper should be at least 20 pages, double-spaced". Again, this is a typewriter view of the world. For the last 20 years, students have been carefully manipulating margin sizes and font sizes to make the 20-page requirement using only 16 pages of text. Obviously, it would be much more sensible to say "the paper should be at least 10,000 words – use the word counter in your text editor".
If you want to make your seminars paper look nice, here's some simple guidlines: make the font size 10-11 points. (12 point is overlarge. Again, have you ever seen a newspaper, magazine, etc.) Use 115% line spacing (or in Microsoft Word lingo, "Multiple 1.15"). Set the margins BIG so that there's 11-15 words per line and 28-32 lines per page. Never ever use justified text — only left-aligned.
And for god's sake, one space between sentences.
23 Jan 07
Hear, hear. Everyone should read The Elements of Style, too.
Posted by: Alex at January 24, 2007 02:13 AMDude, you're awesome.
Posted by: Moush at January 25, 2007 10:04 AM2 Qs:
1. What font?
2. Is that 28-32 lines/page including or excluding footnotes (recognizing that it's standard practice to use footnotes rather than endnotes)?
Posted by: at January 25, 2007 10:13 PMI understand your frustration with these antiquated rules, but I'm surprised it inspired so much anger. Though double-spacing is very grating when you're merely reading a document, it is much more conducive to adding proofreading marks or written notes/comments than single-spacing is. Since lawyers/judges/professors actively annotate so many documents, at least it serves some purpose.
I fully agree with you about that extra space between sentences though!
NO! I'm advocating the true "antiquated rules", which are the rules of quality typesetting that have gone back to the 16th century. It is the typewriter habits, introduced in the last hundred years, that are the problem. Those rules are not antiquated; they are just shitty and obsolete.
As for annotations, that makes no sense. If you have 2" of margin all the way around the document, you'll have plenty of space for annotations AND the text will be readable.
Posted by: MB at January 27, 2007 12:50 AM