Salon.com: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.

[LiberalElite]

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html?google_editors_picks=true

-snip-
Can I let you in on a secret? Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.
-snip-

[valerief]

1. Every time I've corrected people on this they vehemently tell me I'm wrong.

They won't even consider I might be correct. Then again, I'm a female and an older one at that. How could I possibly know what's correct?

[LiberalElite]

6. I would have told you that too -

and I'm an older female. All I know is what I was taught in typing class in high school, and that was two spaces after the period.

[yeoman6987]

11. I 100 percent ALWAYS put two spaces after a period

I will never change. Navy taught me that and it stuck.

[GeorgeGist]

21. How come ...

you only used one after 'change'.

[yeoman6987]

22. It actually is two spaces

[Travis_0004]

2. I would assume students do it because it takes up more space.

On a 10 page paper that adds up. Then it becomes habbit.

Publishers use one space because it takes less space. If you can knock 5 pages off a book, and save some money, why wouldnt you. Either way MLA says both are acceptable unless your professor or editor says otherwise.

This post has two spaces after a period out of protest.

[unrepentant progress]

3. Too bad Manjoo is full of shit

Unfortunately, this whole story is a fairy tale, made up by typographers to make themselves feel like they are correct in some absolute way. The account is riddled with historical fabrication. Here are some facts:

There were earlier standards before the single-space standard, and they involved much wider spaces after sentences.

Typewriter practice actually imitated the larger spaces of the time when typewriters first came to be used. They adopted the practice of proportional fonts into monospace fonts, rather than the other way around.

Literally centuries of typesetters and printers believed that a wider space was necessary after a period, particularly in the English-speaking world. It was the standard since at least the time that William Caslon created the first English typeface in the early 1700s (and part of a tradition that went back further), and it was not seriously questioned among English or American typesetters until the 1920s or so.

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.

As for the “ugly” white space, the holes after the sentence were said to make it easier to parse sentences. Earlier printers had advice to deal with the situations where the holes became too numerous or looked bad.

The primary reasons for the move to a single uniform space had little to do with a consensus among expert typographers concerning aesthetics. Instead, the move was driven by publishers who wanted cheaper publications, decreasing expertise in the typesetting profession, and new technology that made it difficult (and sometimes impossible) to conform to the earlier wide-spaced standards.

The lies do not just come from random Slate writers or bloggers, but also established typographers, who seem to refuse the clear evidence that they could easily see if they examine the majority of books printed before 1925 or so. Even an authority like Robert Bringhurst is foolish enough not to do his research before claiming that double spacing is a “quaint Victorian habit” that originated in the “dark and inflationary age in typography” of the (presumably mid to late) nineteenth century.

Full post (long but worth it): http://www.heracliteanriver.com/?p=324

[Depaysement]

16. I really like two spaces

And I really like this article. Thx!

[unrepentant progress]

18. Honestly I prefer a single space after periods

It's just what looks best to me. I get tired of people repeating hoary old myths, and being blind to what anyone could see just by picking up a an early 20th century edition. The Victorians are responsible for a lot of nonsense in the world, but the space wars aren't something we can saddle them with.

[jeff47]

4. Um.....kinda odd to destroy their own thesis

This readability argument is debatable. Typographers can point to no studies or any other evidence proving that single spaces improve readability. When you press them on it, they tend to cite their aesthetic sensibilities. As Jury says, "It's so bloody ugly."

Kinda hard to claim it's inarguably wrong when it all comes down to "I think it looks better this way".

[LiberalElite]

7. 25 years ago I worked for a lawyer

who adamantly opposed having any of his work typed in "justified" style - i.e., with the margins straight on both left and right. He claimed it was "hard to read." I always wondered how he read a newspaper because they're printed in justified style.

[valerief]

13. the single space is to SAVE SPACE on the page.

[salib]

5. I learned from Turabian

It is still around. However, I am not sure if it still specifies two spaces. It did last I looked.

[loudsue]

8. I was taught in typing class and in journalism class that you ALWAYS space twice

after a period. And the fact that letters are now taking up only the necessary space (all letters are not given their own spacing anymore), doesn't change the fact of spacing twice after a sentence. What double spacing after a period is doing BESIDES ending a sentence, is that it is also allowing for a visual transition, and an easier ability to recall your place in a text.

Visual clues are especially important on a page when the reader needs to look back on something already read. The brain remembers the place in the text better when there is a written space. It's a visual similarity to syncopated function in music.

I think the typographers should go right ahead using their favorite one-space post-period methods, and leave the rest of us alone. Who elected them the righteous ones, anyway?

[Lochloosa]

15. ^^^. ^^^

[Chan790]

9. One more thing Salon and I are going to have to disagree on.

I use 2 spaces after a period. I also correct other peoples' writing as an editor to two-space style for printing and publication because I like it that way. Ergo, it is the house-style of every publication I've ever been in charge of, going back to my days as editor of my university's creative writing quarterly.

(I often use 1 space for online writing as I consider it less formal.)

[radiclib]

10. I read the whole piece, expecting to learn why this is important

Someone? Anyone?
I'm an insufferable stickler for proper grammar and syntax, but this escapes me.

[SunSeeker]

14. Apparently, the author thinks single spaces just look better.

I think the author is wrong, on a number of grounds. See my post #12 below.

[SunSeeker]

12. So the author says it comes down to aesthetics...

But I actually think aesthetics are the best argument in favor of one space over two. One space is simpler, cleaner, and more visually pleasing. (It also requires less work, which isn't nothing.) A page of text with two spaces between every sentence looks riddled with holes; a page of text with an ordinary space looks just as it should.

That being the case, we should have two spaces at the end of a sentence. It emphasizes the thought expressed by that particular sentence. It is not a "hole" but an emphatic division of a series of thoughts, making them easier to digest. A page with just single spaces, regardless of whether they follow a comma, colon, semi-colon or period, looks like one long, Faulkner-like run-on sentence. Two spaces are so much easier on the eyes. As a writer, you should want what is best for conveying your message and making it easier on the reader to absorb that message. Saving yourself from one extra keystroke should not be your primary concern.

If you are so desperate for space that you will cram together your sentences to get it, maybe you are being too wordy. Look to cutting down surplus words rather than spaces. Your writing will be better for it. Forcing your reader to read more words than is necessary to convey your thought is disrespectful to the reader and just plain lazy. An extra space after a period does not burden the reader, it makes the writing more readable.

[Kip Humphrey]

17. BROWN EGGS! WHITE EGGS! BROWN EGGS!! WHITE EGGS!! BROWN EGGS !!! WHITE EGGS!!! BROWN EGGS!!!!

[Brigid]

19. This is something to get worked up about? Really?

[JayhawkSD]

20. HTML will not reporduce two consecutive spaces in text.

Unless you "hard code" the spaces, an HTML rendering will simply strip out the second space.

Also, when the sentence ends with a quote, so that the last character is not a period but is a quotation mark, the second space makes the end point of the sentence much more clear. If there is a single space it appears to run the two sentences together.

Writing style is not some "holy writ" which is carved in stone by sone divine authority.

[Stonepounder]

23. You say po-ta-to, I say po-tah-to; you say to-ma-to, I say -to-mah-to. [n/t]