A monastery was having a problem with the abbot’s pet cat. Felines are nocturnal, and this cat – true to form – became more active at night. When the monks gathered in the chapel to say their evening prayers, the cat distracted them by running, leaping, and meowing.

A monk was appointed to tie up the cat just before evening prayers every night and release it afterward. Problem solved!

Time went by, and the abbot died, and so did the cat. The monks promptly adopted another cat so that they could tie it up before evening prayers.

Question: How often do we forget the original reason for doing something – and keep up the practice even though conditions have changed?

When I conduct writing workshops, I’m often asked whether it’s one or two spaces after a period. I know right away that my answer – only one space, please! – is going to be met with howls of dismay: “But my typing teacher told me TWO spaces!”

Here’s a question I use to shake up those people: How is your typing teacher doing it now – one space or two?

Gulp.

My bet is that most of those teachers have switched to using only one space. Professionals know that computers are sophisticated typography machines with capabilities that the typewriters of old didn’t have.

Look at a capital I and a capital W: Their widths are very different. Typists used to be taught to insert an extra space after a period so that the differences in capital letters wouldn’t be so noticeable. But computers automatically adjust that space themselves. If you insert a second space, you’re announcing that you’re stuck in the past. (I also ask those skeptics if they still use a carriage return at the end of a line. Of course they don’t!)

I often encounter writers who are trapped in something a long-ago teacher (who wasn’t a professional writer) told them. The superstition (that’s all it is) about not starting a sentence with but, or and, or because is one of them, but there are others. For example, English teachers want sophisticated sentence patterns and vocabulary choices, but criminal justice reports require short, objective sentences and everyday language. I’ve seen many cops try to make a report about a stolen bicycle sound like critical treatise on Hamlet. It doesn’t work!

And then there are writers who studied journalism and think that the Associated Press Stylebook is an infallible guide to writing practices. It’s not. The AP is much more concerned with saving space and ink than other forms of publishing – hence the requirement to delete the last serial comma in a series and to lower-case words like president and pope. Other forms of publishing want greater length. Books, for example, need to be long enough to justify the selling price, so punctuation and capitalization practices are different.

Writers are (or should be) lifelong learners. Every writing situation is different. Start thinking about strategies for adjusting your habits as situations change. It’s a great way to grow as a writer, and it’s a requirement if you aim to be taken seriously in the professional world.