“Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period”
Wow. This article has wreaked havoc with my fingers:
Can I let you in on a secret? Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong. And yet people who use two spaces are everywhere, their ugly error crossing every social boundary of class, education, and taste.* You’d expect, for instance, that anyone savvy enough to read Slate would know the proper rules of typing, but you’d be wrong; every third e-mail I get from readers includes the two-space error. (In editing letters for “Dear Farhad,” my occasional tech-advice column, I’ve removed enough extra spaces to fill my forthcoming volume of melancholy epic poetry, The Emptiness Within.) The public relations profession is similarly ignorant; I’ve received press releases and correspondence from the biggest companies in the world that are riddled with extra spaces. Some of my best friends are irredeemable two spacers, too, and even my wife has been known to use an unnecessary extra space every now and then (though she points out that she does so only when writing to other two-spacers, just to make them happy).
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. Some people admitted to slipping sometimes and using a single space — but when writing something formal, they were always careful to use two. Others explained they mostly used a single space but felt guilty for violating the two-space “rule.” Still others said they used two spaces all the time, and they were thrilled to be so proper. When I pointed out that they were doing it wrong — that, in fact, the correct way to end a sentence is with a period followed by a single, proud, beautiful space — the table balked. “Who says two spaces is wrong?” they wanted to know.
Typographers, that’s who. The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences. That convention was not arrived at casually. James Felici, author of the The Complete Manual of Typography, points out that the early history of type is one of inconsistent spacing. Hundreds of years ago some typesetters would end sentences with a double space, others would use a single space, and a few renegades would use three or four spaces. Inconsistency reigned in all facets of written communication; there were few conventions regarding spelling, punctuation, character design, and ways to add emphasis to type. But as typesetting became more widespread, its practitioners began to adopt best practices. Felici writes that typesetters in Europe began to settle on a single space around the early 20th century. America followed soon after.
I lay this problem at the feet of my high school typing teacher Mr. Palomino (my Mother, God bless her, insisted I take typing, a prescient instinct given what I’ve done with my life). We learned to type on typewriters and therefore were trained to hit the space bar twice after ending a sentence. How many times have I done that in my writing life? 1,000,000? 2,000,000?
But over the weekend I decided to mend my ways. It took two solid days of thinking about what I was doing — and that was damn hard — but I did it. I’m now a proud single-spacer!
How about you? Are you a single-spacer? Double-spacer? Does it matter? Do you care?
Given the series I just ran — Trimming Tricks of the Trade — where the message is every little bit counts, even losing a space after sentences could result in fewer orphans, so that alone is a good reason to change.
By the way, the article provides an interesting history of why we have the whole double-space and single-space debate.
UPDATE: It never ceases to amaze me how screenwriting format and style posts generate as much heat as they do. In this case, after reading everyone’s comments — and thanks for your collective insights — my official position will be this:
* I will continue to double-space when writing a screenplay.
*I will single-space everything else including blog posts, lectures, articles, etc.
So let it be written! So let it be done!
Again thanks for your feedback.
[Originally posted January 21, 2011. To read the many comments to that post, go here.]
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