Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

http://www.slate.com/?id=2281146

by apress • 16 years ago

167 167 16 years ago

apotheon28• 16 years ago

He's amusingly wrong in his certainty that everybody else is wrong.

Two spaces grew out of a typographic convention of using a 1.5-width space that was favored by typesetters for proportional typespaces because typewriters didn't have half-width spaces represented on their keyboards. The actually "correct" approach would be 1.5-character width spaces, because even in proportional typefaces a little extra space serves as a useful visual cue that aids in quicker text scanning by eye.

The modern convention of using a single space is the result of journalistic publishers' desire for economy of printing paper. It costs more -- either money for extra pages or characters that won't fit on a page -- to have two (or even 1.5) spaces between sentences. For that reason, a new convention for non-personal correspondence arose, not out of "correctness" or readability concerns, but out of the miserliness of accountants.

As for the lack of studies, that's because it's pretty difficult to come up with a meaningful set of criteria that can be (relatively) easily measured in such a study. Worse, the people with both the resources and interest necessary to fund such studies are for the most part not interested in finding out their cost-saving measures make it harder to read their publications. People I know who read a lot -- who enjoy reading -- including myself all agree, though: having more than a single (proportional or otherwise) character width of space between sentences helps with making it easier to read quickly without having to backtrack and without missing things. In fact, if anything proportional typefaces makes the problem worse, because the spacing between sentences tends to end up smaller than it would otherwise be.

For all his annoying certainty that people who are certain of their disagreement with him are annoyingly wrong, Farhad Manjoo is pretty laughably lacking in the proud correctness he claims.

eliben• 16 years ago

He does link to the Chicago Manual of Style Q&A on the matter: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/OneSpaceorTwo/On...

  The view at CMOS is that there is no reason for two spaces after a period in published work. [...] So, in our efficient, modern world, I think there is no room for two spaces after a period.

Thoreandan• 16 years ago

Page-widening bug, ugh. :(

apotheon28• 16 years ago

The CMoS is hardly a final authority on the matter. It is just one common style, and is optimized for a particular presentation and publication style. It is also used by teachers to get students to write more words when their requirement is a page count.

dkarl• 16 years ago

He's the least technical "technology columnist" I've ever read.

Being a supposed technology columnist, he should have been aware that yes, text is still often rendered in monospace fonts. His grasp of history is just horribly wrong: "Monospaced fonts went out in the 1970s. First electric typewriters and then computers began to offer people ways to create text using proportional fonts." He's talking about exotic hardware that was used by approximately no one.

Being a supposed technology columnist, he should also have done some research to find out how single and double spaces are rendered by word processors and email clients. Double-spacing is perfectly fine if word processors know what two spaces after a period mean and render it appropriately. I was taught that they do, so for me, double-spacing after a period seems like the perfect solution: double-spacing is the least bad solution for monospace fonts, and for proportional fonts, a double-space after a period will automatically be rendered correctly. If he wanted to do an actual service for his readers, he could have told us whether that is true or not. Since he is, you know, a technology columnist. Doesn't that title imply something beyond the ability to review smart phones?

reduxredacted• 16 years ago

Well put. I learned to type on an old fashioned IBM typewriter when I was in middle school. We were taught the two spaces after a period rule and that's so burned into my mind that it takes effort to use a single space after a period.

This really felt like a two page rant over something that very few people in the world even notice when reading, and even fewer would care. On the other-hand, unlearning the two-space rule for someone who touch types fast enough to transcribe most people's speaking speed in real-time is going to take an enormous amount of effort.

Even if I agreed with the statements presented in the article I didn't find anything compelling enough to justify the effort of retraining my fingers.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

If you liked that -- I wonder if you would also like the longer version:

http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.014.10.05.57

jeromec2• 16 years ago

Another writing convention I read long ago which grew out of typewriter limitation is placing a comma or period within quotation marks when not part of the quotation as in:

I'm a fully qualified "hacker."

The period is not part of the quotation, but American writing style suggests it should still go within the quotation marks. America appears to be the only English speaking country to have this writing style; it's not that way in Britain, for example. I read this was due to something like ink splotching (or possibly it was jamming up of keys, which apparently gave us the non-optimum QWERTY layout) from where the typewriter would strike the page on mechanical typewriters when typing quickly if leaving the punctuation outside of the quotation marks as logic would dictate. I'm not sure how much truth there is to that, but I generally rebel and use the British style when writing, especially in informal situations like posting online comments.

kijinbear• 16 years ago

Even in America, MLA says you should place commas and periods outside quotation marks (unless they're part of the quote), whereas Chicago says you should place them outside. I prefer to put them outside quotation marks; there's a reason why this style is called "logical punctuation". MLA usually gets ignored in America, though.

varikin• 16 years ago

Actually, the modern convention of a single space is not due to saving space.† A proportional computer font is kerned in such a way that the space after a period is wider then between words. For example, a standard space is 1em‡, but the space after the period is kerned to give a width of 1.5em‡‡. A typewriter on the other hand only has a single 1em space, so either use 1 space or 2. Also, I read once that they used 2 spaces on a typewriter to reinforce the ending of the sentence in case the period did not strike properly.

† Though newspapers are famous for tricks like this such as the missing oxford comma according the AP Stylebook, and I wouldn't put it past the newspapers to have done single spaces years ago for this reason. There are several differences between AP Stylebook and Chicago Manual of Style to account for saving space.

‡ An em is the width of the lowercase m in the font.

‡‡ 1.5em isn't a hard and fast rule. The rule is wider than an em and less than 2 em's. It could be 1 1/3 is common as well. In reality, a designer spends agonizing amounts of adjusting the kerning on a font til it looks how they want.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

> Actually, the modern convention of a single space is not due to saving space.† A proportional computer font is kerned in such a way that the space after a period is wider then between words.

That's not "the modern convention of a single space"; that's "a return to the original convention of wider than a normal character width spacing". Note your reference to the width of the space being 1.5em, for instance.

Otherwise, what you say is true.

fanf2• 16 years ago

An em is the width of an upper-case M. If you look at printed text you'll see that spaces are much narrower, in fact narrower than ens - compare a space with an en dash.

pg• 16 years ago

Interesting data point when a comment on a forum so clearly surpasses an article written by a professional writer for an online publication.

This, ultimately, is why journalism is losing. The stuff the pros write is no better than the stuff other people write for free in blog posts and comments on forums.

Which is why paywalls don't work. The stuff behind them isn't better enough that readers will pay to get at it.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

I have bad news for you: I'm a professional writer.

I just happen to be much better at it than that hack, even though he probably gets paid more. Of course, the reason he (probably) gets paid more is that he writes for Slate, while I write for TechRepublic. Since he's supposed to be a technology writer for Slate, and I'm basically any kind of writer for TR (specifically security, open source issues, and programming, but that's not relevant in this case), you can pretty much bet money that I know more about the subjects our writings have in common than him, despite the fact he probably gets paid more for his ignorance than I do for my knowledge.

So it goes.

In any case, I really appreciate the implicit compliment, despite the fact this comment at HN was very much off the cuff and not among my best recent writings. I agree it's better than the Slate piece, though perhaps primarily because the Slate writer didn't set the bar very high.

By the way, I scraped together a longer, more in-depth version of my HN comment that you liked for my personal devlog:

http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.014.10.05.57

I think it's better written than my HN comment, too.

edit: Of course, I became a professional writer by making comments in discussions at TechRepublic that people liked, so maybe I don't qualify as the type of "professional writer" you meant to address.

cgray4• 16 years ago

You must be careful when comparing the worst to the best. Farhad has been a crummy technology writer since he was at Salon, and this is basically the only site on which I read comments. I would much rather read a great story by a great journalist than any comment by the average Youtube commenter.

panarky• 16 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2102892

danielh• 16 years ago

I wonder why Slate offers their content under two almost identical URL schemes. At least they have a canonical link.

haploid3• 16 years ago

It seems that the reason it's wrong is that typographers say it is. The author has not given an actual reason, other than appeal to authority.

I will continue to double-space until I'm dead.

evilduck2• 16 years ago

It seems that the reason it's wrong is that typographers say it is.[single space]The author has not given an actual reason, other than appeal to authority.

Nrsolis• 16 years ago

OK. That was funny.

larrik• 16 years ago

HN comments don't respect whitespace as typed when displaying them.

(' ' one space vs. ' ' two spaces)

An effect of HTML, I'm sure. When I edit the post, the 2 spaces between the second set of quotes is indeed still there.

haploid3• 16 years ago

It's a double space. HTML renderers don't display double spaces in the absence of an actual space entity like  

jerhinesmith• 16 years ago

Right Click -> Inspect says it's two spaces.

HTML ignores extra whitespace.

evilduck2• 16 years ago

Really, this was worth downvotes? I thought it was a little amusing given the 'til death ultimatum, even if beyond the OP's control.

apl• 16 years ago

  > I will continue to double-space until I'm dead.

Do you have a reason for doing so?

fexl• 16 years ago

Yes, because my typing teacher in 1975 told me to do it.

flatline2• 16 years ago

I do - deeply ingrained muscle memory from a touch typing class in high school, conditioned over years.

haploid3• 16 years ago

Double spacing helps to set sentences off from each other visually. I prefer reading material that's double-spaced, so that's the way I prefer to write.

It's also to some extent simply out of habit. But even if my only reason was because Miss Millie in the 3rd grade told me to( another appeal to authority ), I'm not writing desperate screeds admonishing everyone about being bad people because they aren't listening to Miss Millie.

jemfinch• 16 years ago

The reason is clear: because it assists readability, and costs me nothing.

neutronicus• 16 years ago

Among other things, it makes it easier to jump around by sentence in a text editor. I think the late Erik Naggum of comp.lang.lisp fame was always a two-spacer for this reason or some related one.

runningdogx• 16 years ago

I do.

If you want to write a parsing program that can delineate sentences, doing so in the face of abbreviations can be difficult. If, for instance, a sentence ends with an abbreviation, and the next sentence starts with a proper noun, an algorithm would detect a run-on sentence and would have to resort to tearing the grammar in the two adjoining sentences apart to figure out where to split them.

If there is a double space between sentences, the problem is reduced to a trivial string splitting operation.

Furthermore, any app that visually displays the text should know that some people use two spaces between sentences, and can trivially correct for this if it's implementing its own fancy typography. HTML already ignores multiple contiguous 0x20 spaces. Any text rendering algorithm fancy enough to implement good typography can likewise simply ignore the double space.

Double spaces between sentences have no mandatory effect on visual layout since layout algorithms can ignore the extra space, However, it can have a significant effect on the speed, if not accuracy, of text parsing algorithms.

bane2• 16 years ago

You haven't given a reason for double spacing either (I like to triple space to make extra sure).

apotheon28• 16 years ago

Try these reasons for two-space sentence separation (and against the Slate single-space argument):

http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.014.10.05.57

spokey• 16 years ago

I'm a couple of years younger than Julian Assange and commonly use two spaces after each sentence, purely out of muscle memory. (I took a "keyboarding" class in 1987 or so using an IBM Selectric typewriter and that's the way I was taught to do it.)

I'm not at all surprised that many people still do this. I'm a little surprised that people assert that's a "proper" way to do it or for that matter get worked up enough about it to write that you should "never, ever" do it. Maybe it's the engineer in me, but I was expecting an actual negative consequence of using two spaces. Typography is important, but I'd guess that with modern kerning techniques the difference between two spaces and one is slight. (In fact, if I were designing a word processing app, I'd think this is is a case I'd account for: If there is a "proper" distance between the period at the end of one sentence and the start of the next letter, wouldn't you ensure that's the distance that is used whether the user typed one space or two?)

sausagefeet• 16 years ago

I think LaTeX does this. Anything more than 1 whitespace is ignored.

splat• 16 years ago

Yes, LaTeX ignores anything more than one whitespace in the source. It does, however, automatically insert extra space after a period. (Unless you disable it with the ~ symbol, e.g. after the word Mr. or e.g.)

cafard• 16 years ago

It seems to me, and Wikipedia seems to confirm, that single spaces after a period used to be called "French spacing" or "French bands". It was not standard US practice in the days of hot type or even photo type.

dzuc• 16 years ago

One of the first things I do when laying out a publication is to find/replace "__" with "_". It's mainly for the sake of consistency; I always receive documents that have a mix of both.

bryanlarsen• 16 years ago

HTML removes extra spaces. I used a double space there, but you only see a single space. Since much of what people read these days is HTML, that's going to become what people expect to see, so I expect single spacing to become the standard. I bet that will have more of an effect on changing people's minds than "expert" opinions.

alanfalcon4• 16 years ago

How so when no published material uses a double space? Did anyone notice and change their approach because of it? Why should HTML rendering change that?

People double space because that is what they were taught. People single space because that is what they were taught. Few people make the effort to change their ways for something they perceive as trivial and which they don't even notice while reading every single day anyway.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

I think that, outside of journalism, very few people were "taught" single spacing. I suspect that mostly, non-journalists who use single spacing between sentences are people who learned by reading tweets, SMS messages, and Facebook pages.

tjr• 16 years ago

Years ago, working on GNU documentation, RMS instructed me to use two spaces. The documents were processed into HTML, TeX, Texinfo, and plain text, the former two of which auto-collapsed two spaces into one, and the latter two of which were often viewed with a monospace font, thus benefiting from the extra space.

I carried this practice over into the rest of my writing, although recently I have noticed that some web systems do not auto-collapse two spaces, and when filling out forms online I've generally reverted back to using single spaces to ensure proper spacing.

aidenn0• 16 years ago

The default setup for any TeX Ive used will convert a space after a period to 1.5 spaces, which is what I prefer. You can of course change this.

ams6110• 16 years ago

Talk about getting worked up over nothing. Must have had a deadline for a column and nothing better to write about.

I use a double space after a period. Always have. I also still use monospaced fonts for almost any composing I do, because I use Emacs whenever possible for that kind of thing.

Any normal text layout software (a browser rendering HTML, TeX) is going to ignore whitespace in the source anyway.

thomas11• 16 years ago

In Emacs you also benefit from sentence-level commands that let you move forward or backward by sentence, kill the current sentence etc. Very helpful. These commands recognize sentences by the double space so they don't confuse abbreviations with sentences. See the Emacs manual, chapter Text > Sentences.

zck• 16 years ago

At least by default -- check out the function sentence-end.

tomlin2• 16 years ago

I guess we've solved all the other world problems?

mcantor• 16 years ago

No, the jury is still out on Vim vs. Emacs.

gacba• 16 years ago

Yes, and whichever you choose, you're wrong because you'll be double-spacing in it.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

Yeah -- there's one emacs holdout that will hang that jury.

Thanks to him, we'll all have to write code in MS word.

ggruschow• 16 years ago

He just taught me that I'm supposed to uses two spaces after a period when doing most of my writing.. in programs.. which are still usually viewed with fixed width fonts.

JoeAltmaier2• 16 years ago

Amusing: his argument is that authorities say to use one, so use one. He then refutes arguments by others that they learned to use two spaces from their authorities, so they do. "That's wrong!" he says.

There is no argument of value in this article.

isleyaardvark4• 16 years ago

But he also gives the reasons why current authorities say one, and previous authorities say two - all due to the aesthetics and readability of spaces with proportional typesetting versus monospaced type.

The reasons are fairly subjective, but I don't see why so many here are dismissing them simply as pure arguments from authority.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

No -- he gives the reasons he agrees with those authorities. That's not the same as those authorities' reasons.

jpr• 16 years ago

I pretty much decided from the title alone that I will begin to use double space just to piss the author off. After reading the article I'm sure that I made the right decision.

acconrad• 16 years ago

I envision this becoming an Oatmeal comic.

zipdog• 16 years ago

From the article:

"Typographers can point to no studies or any other evidence proving that single spaces improve readability."

...So, there's absolutely no evidence, yet everyone who doesn't agree is 'certainly' wrong...

rhoeft• 16 years ago

This is a software problem. Programs that display proportional text should recognize one or more spaces after a period as a sentence break and should render appropriately.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

. . . unless it's not a sentence break, as in the case of "Mrs. Rigsby" or "etc. etc. etc.", or any of dozens of other options.

On the other hand, software configured to recognize two spaces after a period is far more likely to work properly for identifying sentence endings, as long as you type two spaces between sentences.

lelele• 16 years ago

Using two spaces after the end of a sentence allows software to recognize sentences without doubt. There are no heuristics involved which would always be on the verge of failing. That allows me to issue commands which works on sentences mindlessly, and to enable auto-capitalization. The former is the killer feature.

btn• 16 years ago

Wikipedia has a much more comprehensive review of the issues: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing

In general, modern typesetting software (and/or fonts) should be able to properly set the width of spaces between sentences to be slightly wider than than those between words. Unfortunately, TeX is the only common typesetter I know that does this.

edw519• 16 years ago

Articles with the word "never" in the title: Beware their myopia, lack of vision, and narrow-mindedness.

Articles with the word "ever" in the title: Beware their gross generalizations, lack of gray area, and hasty conclusions.

Articles with both the words "never" and "ever" in the title: Never, ever read them. (oops)

stcredzero2• 16 years ago

What galls me about two-spacers isn't just their numbers. It's their certainty that they're right. Over Thanksgiving dinner last year, I asked people what they considered to be the "correct" number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone-everyone!-said it was proper to use two spaces.

What the articles fails to clearly mention, is that many style manuals used in high schools in the 80's were steeped in the monospaced technology of the time and taught two spaces as correct.

Samantha Jacobs, a reading and journalism teacher at Norwood High School in Norwood, Col., told me that she requires her students to use two spaces after a period instead of one, even though she acknowledges that style manuals no longer favor that approach.

This is one of the few mentions in this article of this fact -- that two-spacing was once dogma. This makes me seriously doubt the objectivity of this article. (Actually, I don't think this article is attempting any degree of objectivity at all.)

HN confuses this issue, since we type our comments monospaced, but they are displayed proportional. (Which is why I also double-dash!)

rthomas6• 16 years ago

My high school honors English teacher made us use two spaces, (class of 2006), and since then, nobody has bothered to tell me any differently.

baby• 16 years ago

You're suppose to write the dot after the end of the parenthesis not before !

burgerbrain4• 16 years ago

In the case of the computer programmers, they were most certainly correct. Is the author really so quick to condemn while not realizing that programming is almost always done with monospaced fonts?

Anyway, I never have to worry about this these days anyway. Worrying about trivialities like this is what LaTeX is for ;)

frobozz• 16 years ago

The author also fails to grasp the fact that if "Everyone-everyone!" (including "accomplished professionals") follows a given convention, then that convention must be correct, because that is what convention is.

Prescriptivists are universally incorrect, when they criticise universally practised convention.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

> What the articles fails to clearly mention

. . . is a whole lot of stuff:

http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.014.10.05.57

mmaunder• 16 years ago

Can't believe he managed to wrench 2000 words out of that subject.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

It's not tough to write 2000 words or so on the subject. It's just difficult to write 2000 words or so on the subject and still end up with so little substance.

funthree• 16 years ago

> I asked people what they considered to be the "correct" number of spaces between sentences. The diners included doctors, computer programmers, and other highly accomplished professionals. Everyone—everyone!—said it was proper to use two spaces.

>Which—for the record—is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.

Seriously? That article felt like it was written by someone at 4chan. Why did this get so many upvotes?

terryjsmith• 16 years ago

If the MLA says one space then it has changed since I was in school (~10 years ago). We were always told to use a double space at the end of a sentence and while he links to the Chicago MLA, the actual MLA website also eludes to the fact that it used to be two spaces: http://www.mla.org/style_faq3.

alanfalcon4• 16 years ago

Yes it has changed. Note: it's changed. It's no longer correct to call Pluto a planet, and it's no longer correct to double space after a sentence. And the MLA style guide is not Solid Snake so it probably doesn't elude anything, though it might allude to some things (as long as we're being pedantic).

apotheon28• 16 years ago

CMoS and MLA are not identical.

dalore• 16 years ago

Anyone feel like they name dropped Assange for extra views?

ScotterC• 16 years ago

Always wondered why I preferred Courier in command line

signed,

-a die hard two spacer

peterbotond• 16 years ago

Hi Everyone, I am a two spacer between sentences, and a triple spacer for paragraph starters, and a newline between paragraphs. No wonder nobody reads my emails. :-)

apotheon28• 16 years ago

That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

kaffeinecoma• 16 years ago

This is amusingly relevant for me. I had a number of bug reports for my November app Quick Brown Frog (http://quickbrownfrog.com) from people complaining of low speed scores, due to their two-space habit (all my source texts are formatted to use a single space, and they're displayed in fixed-width).

I considered reformatting all the text to use double-spaces, but then figured that I'd get an equal number of complaints from the single-spacers (little-endians?)

In the end I changed the code to ignore the double space if received as input. No complaints after that. :-)

tommi• 16 years ago

While somewhat practical and user pleasing, it's wrong. If you can't type what you see, is it really proper typing?

Btw. I've never heard of using two spaces after a sentence. Is this an American habit?

nickolai• 16 years ago

Now I feel stupid for feeling bad about being a spelling nazi. This is just so much more sophisticated :)

rlpb• 16 years ago

This is a matter of encoding. It's got nothing to do with typography. Typesetting software should do the right thing. There aren't any rules for spacing apart from what the font designer specified.

Of course, the software has to understand what it is that it is typesetting, and the font needs to define spacing in such a way that the typesetting software can do things as intended, so the specification for authors here is really defined by the software. If it wants two spaces after a period, then give it two. If it wants one, then give it one.

I suspect that most software expects one.

In a fully pedantic world, we'd have different unicode code points for "gap between word", "gap after sentence", and presumably others to cover every situation, and the font designer would then have full control.

monochromatic• 16 years ago

Every style guide I've read (I don't have a citation handy) says that either convention is acceptable, as long as you're consistent throughout the document. This is the first article I've ever seen that said two spaces is wrong, and I am not convinced. (However, I will continue to use one space, because I think it just looks better.)

lukev• 16 years ago

This is a trend I've noticed a lot lately on articles on typography and design - they're very light on 'why' and pretty much just invoke appeals to authority - "my design school taught me to do it this way, QED."

There is a good reason to use one space, and that is that when you're typing, you're only creating text, not typesetting. Software does the typesetting now, and will automatically space out sentences in a way that looks right. You don't need to do it yourself, just like you don't need to enter manual linebreaks anymore.

burgerbrain4• 16 years ago

"There is a good reason to use double spaces, and that is that when you're typing, you're only creating text, not typesetting. Software does the typesetting now, and will automatically space out sentences in a way that looks right. You don't need to change your habits, because computers work for _you_"

Counter-argument, in the form of a strategic rewording.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

> There is a good reason to use two spaces, and that is that when you're typing, you're only creating text, not typesetting. Software does the typesetting now, and will automatically space out sentences in a way that looks right. Furthermore, it is easier for software to detect two adjacent space characters than to guess at where you meant to put a space at the end of a sentence and where you meant to put a space after an abbreviation. You don't need to change your habits, because computers work for you, but using two spaces between sentences helps them do their work sometimes. Also, many people still use monospace fonts for many purposes.

improved version

qjz• 16 years ago

Multiple consecutive spaces == 1 space, in the same way 0 + 0 + 0 = 0. Put another way, 3 x 0 is not greater than 1 x 0. Even in typography or typesetting, the goal is to provide a single space, but to do it in a proportion to the surrounding letters that is appropriate for the context. This goal isn't any less important when an inflexible typesetting environment forces you to use a narrow range of discreet units.

I've edited too many documents to count, but in nearly all cases, it was a default software setting that inserted extra space after a period, before the next sentence. The author can't reliably claim to know how much space Assange chose to use, any more than he can affect how his own text will be presented after it is processed for publication. It's an implementation detail that often gets transformed (by software and/or humans) as it makes its way through various systems.

webuiarchitect• 16 years ago

How the hell is his personality anyway related to the news/facts going out of wikileaks or its credibility?

njharman• 16 years ago

I had a real hard time determining if this article was serious or a sarcastic rant against people who get overwrought on trivialities.

>in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men's shirt buttons on the right and women's on the left.

Those are both examples of arbitrary decisions carried forward by inertia and slavish adherence to dogma. Makes me strongly believe the two space rule is another example. I read most, skimmed rest (it was kind of hard to find sentence breaks actually) of article but I found no argument or justification other than "typographers" say it's so.

I also frequently use monospaced fonts. So, author and these unquoted/unspecified typographers he claims to speak for can kiss my shiny double-spaced ass.

jawee3• 16 years ago

>these unquoted/unspecified typographers There are quotes from several specified typographers and style manuals. I do not understand why they are unquoted and unspecified. See especially paragraphs five, six, and eight.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

There are quotes from two typographers (less than "several" by my estimation), and they don't even give meaningful support for their positions. They just claim to be right.

wolfrom• 16 years ago

As both a hacker and a hack writer, I follow William Shunn's manuscript format: http://www.shunn.net/format/story.html

"In the days of typewriters, the usual practice was to put two spaces after the end of every sentence, and also to put two spaces after every colon. This helped make the separations between sentences more apparent, and helped editors more easily distinguish periods from commas and colons from semicolons. With the dominance of computers, that practice is changing, and it is more common now to see only one space between sentences.

"Ingrained habits die hard, though, so if you're used to hitting the spacebar twice after a period, you shouldn't stress out about it, particularly if you're using a Courier font."

Vivtek3• 16 years ago

It already irritated me that he says I'm wrong after a lifetime of typing - but then he goes on to misspell "Ay yi yi". Does he think that was a piratical saying? Wouldn't you think someone obsessed with punctuation would at least care a little about spelling?

handelaar2• 16 years ago

Why you should always, always use two spaces after a full-stop (when writing for online use):

1. Because it remains correct in monospace, and 2. Because no HTML rendering engine displays the second one anyway.

This man's rather ill-informed about the 'tech' part of his 'tech column' gig.

colomon• 16 years ago

Not just that -- doesn't he give the strong impression he manually changes each instance of a double space he runs into?

nchlswu• 16 years ago

I've always been a single spacer. I understood the purpose in monospace, I otherwise never understood the practice. Almost everyone I've heard only practices it because that's how they learned. That reason wasn't good enough, especially when that was (mostly) rooted in the typewriter, and we're using the modern day computer. Some (justified) reasons are enlightening.

I was always under the impression that in a proper typeset manuscript, sentence spacing should be slightly wider than a standard single space. Typographers make this change when they typeset right? Isn't there an alternate ASCII character for this purpose (entirely not sure, I might be thinking of special characters in certain fonts)

zokier• 16 years ago

Not ASCII but Unicode: http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/category/Zs/list.htm

Seth_Kriticos• 16 years ago

Two spaces sound weird, but my biggest gripe with the typewriter legacy is the QWERTY layout and it's prevalence. (yes, I'm a dvorak typer by choice, re-learned it after QWERTY).

cedsav• 16 years ago

It always amazes me how cultural differences find their ways in the oddest little details. I had never heard of the 2 space rule until I moved to the US, and only recently did I realize that the question mark was missing its preceding space... I had to do a bit a research and I'm relieved to read that the ellipsis can still be used to indicate a pause, or a trailing off thought.

sabatier• 16 years ago

Worse than using two spaces is using no spaces at all. Intolerable.

isleyaardvark4• 16 years ago

If two spaces is right and one space is wrong, why is it that I just opened up a half dozen books and saw that they only use single spaces? If two spaces is better for readability, why can't I find books using two spaces?

burgerbrain4• 16 years ago

I doubt your books display themselves in monospaced fonts. My technical literature more often than not does.

isleyaardvark4• 16 years ago

That's my point. Most books don't use monospaced fonts, which was the case given in the article for instances where you'd use two spaces. You don't often see monotype in emails you send, or word processors, or newspapers, or even (as pointed out earlier) in web pages.

If you're writing a technical manual, then you may want to use two spaces, but really isn't that something that would be handled by the printer?

apotheon28• 16 years ago

It's cheaper to print a 310 page book than a 360 page book. That's why.

isleyaardvark4• 16 years ago

I'm willing to bet that some back of the envelope calculation would show that the savings are not anywhere near that many pages, and that the pages saved by either reducing the font size or the measure of the lines would dwarf the savings from single spaces after periods.

nycticorax2• 16 years ago

I think this guy needs to get clear on the distinctions between typewriting, typesetting, and word processing. If you're typing on a typewriter, it sounds like it's generally considered admissible to use two (monospaced) spaces after a word.

As far as typesetting goes, TeX makes an inter-sentence space a bit wider (but less than 2x) than an inter-word space, unless you tell it otherwise. Since I trust Knuth more than this guy, I suspect that's at least considered typographically admissible.

If you're using a word processor with a monospaced font, it seems like it makes sense to follow the typewriter convention (two spaces between sentences). If you're using a word processor with a proportional font, and you want to follow the TeX typesetting convention, I think you're stuck: it's not trivial for a computer to distinguish between an inter-sentence space and an inter-word space (because of things like "etc."). So if you use a single space between sentences, it's going to be smaller than it would be in the typeset document, and if you use a double space, it's going to be larger than it would be in the typeset document. Or you could conveniently decide to follow the "french spacing" convention, in which inter-sentence spaces are the same size as inter-word spaces. Which is apparently what the author favors.

binarymax• 16 years ago

I felt compelled to look at the source and search for '.[space][space]'

At least they take their own advice.

pcorsaro• 16 years ago

I like how he so emphatically says that it is wrong, and cites style guides that say it's OK to use 2 spaces.

From the HLA source he cited (http://www.mla.org/style_faq3): "... As a practical matter, however, there is nothing wrong with using two spaces after concluding punctuation marks unless an instructor or editor requests that you do otherwise."

tomlin2• 16 years ago

I do 3 spaces now. Working myself up to 4.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

You should write the Slate writer a note thanking him for the inspiration to do so.

rradu• 16 years ago

I always put two spaces after a period in grade school because I wanted my papers to appear longer.

mrinterweb• 16 years ago

I was taught to use two spaces.   Apparently there was a reformation of the the double space rule sometime thereafter.    I would expect to be informed about such an important change in English grammar through a high exposure world-wide public announcement campaign. Considering that the use of double spaces separating sentences can provoke such ridicule, there really needs to be a global effort to educate all English speaking citizens of Earth.     Perhaps even training centers could be erected where people could be taught this new important change to the language.       These centers could perhaps even treat those who have been subject to the extreme psychological trauma of the public ridicule caused by the misuse of the space.

cincinnatus• 16 years ago

What a useless pedantic article, how did this get to the top of the HN front page?

I often type two spaces because it was drilled into me when I learned touch typing at 14 years of age. Very hard to unlearn that. Unusually I also had a Dad who was a layout designer, so I knew a lot about typography including that you only use a single space when laying type. Still f'ing hard to overcome the double space which is done completely reflexively by fast touch typists.

haberman3• 16 years ago

I've used two spaces for a while now. It just feels right that sentences have more space between them than "Mr." has after it.

But there's one annoying, persistent browser bug that cramps my style. If a line wraps after the first of two spaces, the second space will be on the next line, which looks terrible: http://i.imgur.com/MksV7.png

apotheon28• 16 years ago

That's an edge-case of the way that person's software preserves multiple spaces by force in browsers; it replaces the second of two spaces between sentences in the source with a similar, non-breaking space. Use the `diff` command (if you're on a real OS) to compare; you'll see the two spaces are not actually duplicates of the same character code in the font used on that page.

Misha_B• 16 years ago

After reading some of the comments, I've decided to only use two spaces from now on.

alxp• 16 years ago

HTML's smooshing two spaces together was offensive to me in the 90s when I was learning it after being a touch typist since I was 7 years old. I still double space, but no one knows unless they view source.

rorrr• 16 years ago

Real men use tabs.

Tycho• 16 years ago

What does it matter, word processors format this automatically, right? I was taught this rule in primary school I think, but have never used it (two-spacing). Slows down typing speed to much.

Deestan• 16 years ago

To sum up:

- Some use two spaces because they are used to it. They are wrong, stupid and annoying.

- Author use two spaces because he's used to it. Why can't you see that he is correct?

To give an actual argument related to value, I think it is helpful to differentiate between periods that end sentences and periods that end abbreviations.

jawee3• 16 years ago

My problem is with teachers who insist on using double spaces after a period. I have had a few teachers in recent years demand double space and will not accept papers that do not use the convention. Because it feels entirely unnatural for me to hit the space bar twice, I can never remember to do it consistently. I just wrote a python script to convert it for me afterwards.

On a similar note, I got a 0 on a paper once because it was not in the required font, Times New Roman. I had written it on my netbook while on vacation and printed directly from it and had not realized that the Linux distro installed automatically called Liberation Serif "Times New Roman" inside of Abiword.

barrkel3• 16 years ago

When I see two spaces, especially in proportional text, I use it as evidence of the writer being a luddite or "past it". Only one piece of evidence, not conclusive. Probably most of its explanatory power comes from it being an indicator the user is old, educated in typing with a typewriter.

apotheon28• 16 years ago

. . . or a programmer, accustomed to using monospace fonts, who has learned to touch-type and hits the space bar twice as a matter of habit.

When I see one space, I tend to suspect the writer is not a (very good, anyway) programmer, and is not particularly concerned with how text looks in reader software that uses monospace fonts -- and probably learned to type on a cellphone. I also expect to see such people spell "you" with the first two letters missing at some point.

barrkel3• 16 years ago

I try to use evidence, rather than using confirmation bias ("expect to see").

jawee3• 16 years ago

The MLA handbook has some interesting information about spacing after the period. Here is section 3.2.12 "Spacing after Concluding Punctuation marks" in my physical copy of the sixth edition.

Publications in the United States today usually have the same spacing after a period, a question mark, or an exclamation mark, or an exclamation point as between words on the same line. Since word processors make available the same fonts used by typesetters for printed works, many writers, influenced by the look of typeset publications, now leave only one space after a concluding punctuation mark. In addition, most publishers' guidelines for preparing a manuscript on disk ask professional authors to type only the spaces that are to appear in print.

Because it is increasingly common for papers and manuscripts to be prepared with a single space after all concluding punctuation marks, this spacing is shown in the examples in this handbook. As a practical matter, however, there is nothing wrong with using two spaces after concluding punctuation marks unless an instructor requests that you do otherwise. Whichever spacing you choose, be sure to use it consistently in all parts of your paper--the works-cited list as well as the main text. By contrast, internal punctuation marks, such as a colon, a comma, and a semicolon, should always be followed by one space.

sdizdar• 16 years ago

I had never heard of the 2 space rule until I moved to the US, so this is one of cultural things. I believe "single space" rule is prevalent is Europe and India.

This anyway points that 2 space rule is not "right way" since significant portion of the world (maybe majority of your customers) will think it is weird and be confused about it. The "1 space rule" is more neutral.

ohyes• 16 years ago

I was hoping the reason would be something interesting like 'we used forensic analysis of punctuation habits to determine the author of certain documents,' and it seems that it was going that way with the Julian Assange bit.

Then it rapidly devolved into argumentum ad nauseum and appeal to authority; I was very disappointed.

tallanvor• 16 years ago

You know, there are things to worry about, and things not to worry about, and unless you are printing a book, whether or not people use 1 or 2 spaces after a period really isn't something you need to worry about.

I was taught to add two spaces after a period, and I have no plans to stop doing so. If people really want to complain, I suppose I can show them the latest edition of the APA style guide, which made two spaces the recommendation again, or MLA, which suggests one but notes that "as a practical matter, however, there is nothing wrong with using two spaces after concluding punctuation marks".

Of course, maybe the author isn't as dumb as he sounds... He found a way to get paid to complain about spacing, after all.

wrs• 16 years ago

I set lead type as a hobby, and I can tell you the entire concept of a "space character" does not exist in typesetting. Space is not made of characters, it's made of space (in metal, it's made of tiny shims of copper, brass, or lead).

Any use of the space bar in a computer typesetting context is just a hint to some algorithm regarding how much space you want put between the characters on either side. TeX doesn't put "1.5 spaces" between sentences; it puts glue that is slightly stretchier than the glue it puts between words.

mmphosis• 16 years ago

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/marks/period.htm

  This is a prob. I tested!

This is a problem I tested!

  This is a prob.&nbsp; I tested!

This is a problem. I tested!

apotheon28• 16 years ago

It suddenly occurs to me to ask whether those friends will ever invite him to dinner with them again. He turned their friendly dinner conversation into an excuse to call them Luddites stuck in the 19th century.

"You're off my Thanksgiving invitation list, Farhad."

bgmccollum• 16 years ago

Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style

Section 2.1.4 – Use a single word space between sentences.

In the nineteenth century, which was a dark and inflationary age in typography and type design, many compositors were encouraged to stuff extra space between sentences. Generations of twentieth-century typists were then taught to do the same, by hitting the spacebar twice after every period. Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit. As a general rule, no more than a single space is required after a period, colon or any other mark of punctuation.

lostbit• 16 years ago

For me, the second space after the period is a wasted byte. The same applies for the just one space after the period if you are actually moving to the next paragraph (just a CR+LF) is enough (more than enough in Unix).

But what I really dislike is the preceeding space before the question mark. That really messes up my brain sentence parser (and many word processos too).

Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

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