Dear A:

You wrote:

>
> How should one end a sentence that ends with a paren which is immediately
> preceded by something that requires a period, such as an abbreviation?
>
> Thanks for your help.
>
> How should the following be typed:
>
> …….of instructional development (Standard I.C.I.). The remainder of
> the…..
>
> OR
>
> ……of instructional development (Standard I.C.I.) The remainder of
> the…..
>
The first is correct. The second is confusing. Note that today many abbreviations are spelled without periods today. I use the example of person with an abbreviation after his name (John Smith, Jr.).

> Which would be the correct format for ending the sentence with parentheses
> and starting the next line? We were taught that the beginning of the next
> sentence always has 2 typed spaces at the beginning of each sentence
> (usually after punctuation).

The standard typewriter textbooks taught that there should be two spaces after a sentence-ending period. Most businesses followed this practice when letters were typed on typewriters. This helped the sentence stand out better.

Today with various fonts and word processors, this standard is hard to follow. One word processor I use flags two spaces together as an error. Two spaces after a period is strictly a style standard, not a rule. Because of what that word processor did to me, I no longer follow it. A friend who works in office applications training (Word, Word Perfect, etc.) says that not too many businesses follow the standard today. With HTML, for example, you can’t, unless you write in a special code for the extra space. Such is progress.