This is precisely what I said in private email – which was not to Megan McArdle, by the way; she’s being hyper-sane on her own – when this ludicrous Slate post about one-spacing was written! My exact words were:
You may have my second space when you pry it from my cold, dead hands. I don’t care if this upsets typographers. I really and truly do not.
I don’t know why, but the fact that Megan independently came up with the same response that I did is immensely cheering.
HTML doesn’t care. It’s all one space to it.
BWAHAHAHAHAAH!!!
I can’t see the point in getting worked up, either way. I learned to put a second space after sentence-ending periods in school, and discovered before I graduated that MS Word produced two spaces worth of … space after the same period. Between then and the end of college a decade ago, I seem to have dumped the habit. It’s no great loss, and the work of a single regular expression to fix to your liking, either way. (Actual regex too small to fit in the margins.)
OTOH, I’m fairly convinced the typography dorks are just a new batch of rank elitists, so screw ’em. Do whatever, and let kerning sort it out.
Until I read these articles I wasn’t even aware there was a debate. I learned to put two spaces after the period and I see no reason to stop just because someone doesn’t like the way it looks.
Frankly, I think the single space looks sloppy. To each his own though.