> The “standard” of one space is maybe 60 years old at the most, with some publishers retaining wider spaces as a house style well into the 1950s and even a few in the 1960s.

This article starts off sounding like it is making an argument against prescriptivists, then claims that older standards are more authoritative?

Why not choose scriptio continua as an even more authoritative style? Or, take a look at the quality of writing in something like Readers Digest from the 1950s, and judge whether the conversational tone is worth emulating.

Regardless, most opinions are probably influenced either by such books as The Mac is not a Typewriter or alternately by a high school typing class that was based on a curriculum for professional secretaries. There were still high schools into the 1990s that taught students about carbon paper.

Even if there is a lot of unmerited arrogance about using a single space after a period, there's a lot of officiousness around a claim that two spaces after a period is "correct". If it is a generational thing between people who went to high school in the 70s and 80s vs 90s and 2000s, then it is also a difference between people who were learning business correspondence compared to people who were learning desktop publishing and web design.