Full stops (or periods as you yanks call them...) should be followed by two spaces. I'm too lazy to use   so the browsers eats them as white space.
That shouldn't happen, people shouldn't be required to learn html in order to be able to post in proper English.
And for that point, things like & should be auto-escaped to &, people shouldn't have to escape stuff themselves in order to have posts spew valid HTML. (Not that this site is valid, what's with the script before the head?)

IMO the solution is to either make a toggle box to either post HTML or (sanitized) plain text (you already fix \n into <br />), or bin HTML and use BBCode or whatever.

Or just use SMF, either way works for me...

Mined.

David, just hold tight, there will be an overhaul that will suit you down to the ground.

you might want to email your thoughts to Joe and suttree, they are very interested in my thoughts, well most of the time anyhoo.

"American English"........didn't know those two words could be used in the same sentence. Oxymoron?

People in Canada speak English. It's a dialect that's basically the same as any other English speaking country.
Americans speak American and refuse it admit it trying to leach off our good name.

No, there is one space after a comma, and 2 after a full stop.
I am with David, don't try to teach the English, English.

LOL, I must take a step back from this conversation, I will be here all night, I find it difficult to understand how a language is adopted and then bastardised or (bastardized) just for you American English speakers, and then claimed to be English.

Call it something else, like American or Americanz as most words seem to like the letter z instead of s.

Enough Craig, enough,

This isn't a language issue, it's a typography issue.

The double-space after a full stop is a relic of old printing technology and typewriters. With older (often monospaced) fonts, it can be hard to track pauses, so the double-space improved readability. It's not nearly so necessary with modern screen displays. I'm old-fashioned enough that I type two spaces after a full stop as a matter of course, but there's no functional harm done when screen displays shorten that to one.

As an aside, English as spoken in parts of the United States is actually more similar to English as spoken in England a few hundred years ago than what is spoken in England today. There's really no linguistic basis to claim that American dialects are somehow not 'really' English.

Back on topic, there's also no basis to claim that the spacing standard is split by the Atlantic Ocean. Double-spacing is a common standard in the United States as well. It happens to be where I learned the habit. Mind, I'm also old enough that I used to use typewriters on a regular basis...

@karma its actually nothing to do with typewriters, it is taught in school in England, with good old pen and paper, and has been for the last 30 years that i can vouch for.

This is what I meant, I must block this thread out of my mind.

be gone you evil thread

When the history of English in America is actually considered, take into account that our dialects split almost 250 years ago...and American English is still closer to the original English than modern British English. From the standpoint of linguists, AmE is basically old school BrE.

When viewed from that perspective, please realize that we have preserved the original beauty of the English language, while the British have moved away from it...

I was taught in school to use a double space. Now in college, for one of the departments I take classes from I have to use single spaces. I can switch between both when the need is called for, but I find myself using a double space by default.

Also, this thread has taken quite the interesting turn.

Pix, Yeah... Yer Mom.

I was always taught that there are 2 spaces after the period/full stop.
However I have never once done that outside of writing papers for class.

Lol.

I've never heard before that you have to use two spaces after a full stop. And they say Italian is more complex than English...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fre...
It dates back to Gutenberg and is to do with readability.  It's removed from the forums not due to any style reasons, but because HTML ignores white space for technical reasons.

And there *is* harm done without it.  The typesetting engine in firefox doesn't support variable width spaces, and draws the whole lot the same.  It is harder to read (IMO).

double space for life!!

double space FTW

It started out as David saying how this forum doesnt conform, I type correctly with a space after my commas and two after full stops, but FF and the forum dont keep them, they are eaten up as white space.

It then exploded from there with you Ex-Brits claiming the moral high ground.

I use the double space a lot of the time; but in my current job, I have to use a single space for stylistic reasons...and it bothers me!

I'm English, And I've never heard the whole double space after a period thing. Mind you, I hated english. Personally I believe rulez are for Loserz.

I like your use of the z, were you in the plasticine class at school or perhaps a window licker when riding the school bus.

Assuming you went to school in the UK, I dont know how you were never taught it, unless of course my sarcastic comments above were true

I used to eat the plasticine... And I dunno. We were never taught anything of interest to this topic in english.. We were taught such things as understanding words, And spelling, And forced to read stupid poems that our teachers were convinced had meaning, but in reality were just plain boring.
I don't recall being taught anything of import.. Seriously. I learned more grammar in french.
But then, I was a window licker. And I hated school. And I'm possibly the only stupid Englishman in the world. So Maybe I was just to busy sniffing the glue to actually learn anything...

Ah, those were the days, filling up a orange squash bottle with petrol and sniffing it, then having a go on the glue bag, headaches were soon to follow