I am a former teacher and a writer of lessons for youth. I am trying to track down a new writing convention in spacing sentences.

When I was young, back in the days before White Out, the rule was this: 1 space between words, 2 words between sentences and 3 spaces to indent paragraphs. It was simple and easy to remember.

Nowadays, all over the 'net, including Wordsmith, the new writing convention is one space between sentences. It seems to be a new rule: 1 spacebar between words and sentences and 1 carriage return between paragraphs. ("And what the heck is a "carriage return" anyway?" say the kids. )

Am I correct in this observation, or is something else happening? Are people still following the old rule or is some feature of the internet daemon shortening the spaces between sentences?