Typesetting

So, I just learned that there is an ongoing debate out there as to whether there should be one or two periods after the end of a sentence. I had no clue. All through school, we were drilled that there should be two spaces after a sentence. Now, I'm hearing that for professional letters, memos, acedemic papers, etc, you only need one. You should only use two spaces if you need an additional pause for affect, email, personal correspondance or if you are publishing a work of fiction. The two space rule is left over from typewriter with monospaced typsets, today's word processors have proportionally spaced fonts which make the text easier to read with just the one space. In fact, some people consider the extra space "distracting and unattractive". To me, it's absurd that this argument even exists. Does it really matter? Do people really shutter when they see two spaces at the end of a sentence? If so, they shouldn't read this blog because I feel like it looks better that way and plan to continue to use it in this context. And all my papers for school will continue to have two spaces to make them a few lines longer. ;) One wonders that if the great minds of this world worried about things other than how many spaces are at the end of a sentence what a difference we could make. Hey, starving kid in Africa, one space or two?