For (Kelsey):
Double spacing, keeping you organized, setting up your page for spacing out your ideas, examples, and connections while making it easy for your audience to engage with the text.
When it comes to annotating and reviewing a document, it opens up margins for the teacher and students to give feedback. This helps make revisions much easier for teachers and students.
Double spacing encourages students to be organized with the spacing because as they read back they can acknowledge thoughts, sections, and paragraphs.
Londonderry is all about preparing us for the future. When we take on professions or trades, there will be writing, lots of it. Double spacing is the standard format for essays, research papers, manuscripts and more, and it allows readers to navigate documents while working with the standard spacing that is recommended or required in the future.
While single spacing may look more concise, double spacing has more practical benefits, especially when it comes to terms of clarity, usability, and overall organization of text.
Against (Kaylee):
When you hear the words, ‘write a ten page essay’ the only sounds the class will be filled with are groans and complaints. The thing is, when you really think of a ten page essay in MLA format, it is really only writing five pages.
Why make a student dread and procrastinate writing their essay all because they think they have to write double what they are supposed to? There is already so much stress put on students, they should not have to be anxious about writing an essay.
Double spacing makes a writing piece look unnecessarily long, which takes up even more time from a student’s day when they have to scroll or flip back and forth between pages to keep their train of thought.
Lets not forget the obvious reason why double spacing stinks, it looks unnatural. To me, double spacing is like running a marathon in a stiff pair of skinny jeans- uncomfortable, awkward, and it looks weird.
I understand this type of spacing helps teachers to grade since it gives them room to write notes to students, but in English class when we have to annotate an article, it is single spaced. Nothing we see on a day to day basis is double spaced. That goes for text messages, Lancer Spirit articles, directions on a science lab, book pages, and more.
In the end, double spacing does allow room for teachers to write notes on a student’s work, but this format takes up too much space, not only wasting paper but also the student’s motivation to write.
