Monday Let's Have a Big Fight Post

It's ONE SPACE after a period, dammit:

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.

I always understood this as a holdover from times when (ask your parents, kids) we all used typewriters, and it wasn't until college AP Style drilled it into me not to do this anymore that I started noticing how many people still did.

A.

Comments

[guest]

I still don't understand this fight. Most of the time people are typing into computers, correct? So the computers can display any which way it should regardless of one space or two. The one argument for making it two? If every sentence is separated with two spaces, the computer programs in use can identify them correctly for any further formatting or analysis (you can't assume every period w/space is an indication of the end of a sentence).

So this argument, the *existence* of this argument just baffles me. It's actually pretty much irrelevant in the computer age.

[racymind]

Goddamnit, I want my motherfuckind second space! Like this! See!

Hahahahaha!

Now where is that damn Smith-Corona so I can show you how pretty it is!

[Jude]

Fuck all y'all. I'mma start using THREE spaces.

[spork_incident]

One, two, whatever. It's the idiots who use *no* space that make me homicidal.

.

[adrastos]

Fuck you sideways, Jude. Why I said that I dunno. The only punctuation I'm passionate about is my dislike of exclamation points, which some people overuse. I refuse to use them but it's more of a quirk than anything...

[Grandmère Mimi]

Adrastos!!!!

Howevah!!!! I like the music videos that you post, so I'm inclined to cut you slack.

[CK]

Um, two space rule???? I'm 53 with a degree in English and I've never heard of it. Or, it is possible that at my advanced age, I've forgotten it.

[pansypoo]

anal typing? there is a rule? really, and you had a discussion it? people use TWO spaces? my mind is boggled.

[Sue]

Arguments of this type literally make my blood boil, irregardless of who is right. I must lay down now to calm myself.

[hoppy]

Uh, Pansy, you also must always capitalize the first letter in every single sentence. So, dammit, use two spaces between paragraphs, too!!! And, my left little finger is longer than my right little finger because I really love to use these!!!!!

[Interrobang]

Screw you, Athenae. One space after each word, two spaces after a sentence ends. One space is actually much harder to read (and otherwise, guest upthread is absolutely right). This is English, dammit, not Biblical Hebrew, and we have rules about spaces.

[Elspeth Ravenwind]

I'm a two-spacer, but I'm trying to reform to a single space between sentences. I'm going to slip up, but meh - if someone wants to flog me, they can get bent. It's a frakkin' space for crying out loud! Can folks PLEASE learn to use the proper forms of "they're, there, and their"!???!?! SO many BIGGER issues than a flippin' end o'sentence space.

[Athenae]

I knew this would bring out stronger opinions than anything to do with Republicans.

A.

[mgmonklewis]

I'm not a journalist, but I assume the One Space rule was specifically used by print journalism to save valuable column space, not because its utter Rightness was handed down on tablets from Mt. Sinai.

The two-space rule is what I was taught, though I don't get bent out of shape over it. In my work, we set our software to keep double spaces from occurring (unless you specifically use a non-breaking space) to prevent accidental inconsistency. That said, two spaces separating sentences is easier for the eye to read, just as serif fonts are easier for the eye to follow along lines of printed text. (I suppose I now inadvertently started a serif vs. non-serif war.)

You want to see something hard to read? Let's go back to medieval Latin and use no spaces between sentences *or* words. Efficiency! Or, maybe not.

[mgmonklewis]

Oh dear God, I just went to the Slate article and saw that it was written by Farhad Manjoo. Had I known that, I would have ignored the topic entirely. How *did* Salon let that supernova of talent get away?

[mgmonklewis]

I agree with Elspeth. I'd prefer to argue for proper usage of its/it's, there/they're/their, and other such things that actually inhibit reading comprehension, rather than argue about minutiae of space usage, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and whether the Big-Endians or Little-Endians were correct in "Gulliver's Travels."

[adrastos]

Your and you're are personal pet peeves.

[GeoCrackr]

Regardless of whether you prefer one space or two, we can all agree that writing a 1,300-word whinefest about it is a pretty douchey thing to do.

[hoppy]

Did you all know that space may include as many as 11 dimensions? I'm reading "The Hidden Reality" by Brian Greene, so that makes me an expert. Now, with that many dimensions, there are plenty to satisfy the 2 spacers, the one spacers and even the 3 spacers.

[liprap]

Twitter will train the second space out of you reeeeally fast.

[Marc]

What Elspeth and mgmonklewis said.

[RAM]

Two spaces were standard while typing on typewriters, until IBM introduced the Executive model that had proportional type. With proportional type, which is what word processing programs use with typefaces other than mono-space fonts like Courier, each letter has its own amount of horizontal space, called kerning. Which means a capital N takes up less space on the page than a capital M. And so on. Proportional typewriters spelled the death of typing erasers because it was impossible to move the carriage back to the exact spot to start up again after you'd done your erasing. Enter correction tape and Liquid Paper (thanks, Bette Nesmith Graham!).

When I learned to type lo those many years ago on Underwood upright electrics with blank keys (the keyboard layout was up on the wall at the front of the classroom, and was covered during tests) it was two spaces after each sentence.

But in the newspaper world, it's been one space after sentences on typeset pages ever since type has been set. So the typographers would take our copy with two spaces after each sentence and rekey it using one space after each sentence. At our paper, we were still using cut and paste with waxers and the whole bit until I retired in 2008, although the Compugraphic photo typesetters and the old Headliners had long been replaced with Macs and laser printers. I never had the pleasure of dealing with hot lead typesetters; they sounded positively deadly. Would YOU like to work in an office sitting next to a machine roughly the size of a Volkswagon with hot lead boiling inside it? Actually, my old paper is still using paste-up for some stuff. But it's on its way out. Ever tried to buy a waxer? Not the easiest thing to find these days.

Anyway, look closely at any newspaper or magazine and you'll see it's one space after a sentence ends, and yes, that's not only to save space, but also to make the copy look nice without ugly gaps. I find two-spacers quaint, but silly. Sort of like insisting your new Prius have a buggy whip holder bolted onto the driver's door. I suppose, though, it's one way to hang on to that Christmas morning when you woke up to find a new Royal portable under the tree.

[mgmonklewis]

@RAM,

Your points are well-taken (at least until the last paragraph, which is unnecessarily patronizing). However, I'd note that, although you may find magazines using the standard of one space after a sentence, you can also find a lot of things in magazines that don't necessarily help the reader -- the occasional odd font, for one. While lots of fonts "make the copy look nice," it can also be really difficult to read articles set in fonts that are too pale, too narrow, too gothic, too undifferentiated from one letter to the next, whatever. Although they make it "look nice" in a graphic sense, that quality is in the eye of the beholder, and doesn't necessarily contribute to ease of reading.

I don't give a rat's *ss whether people use one space or two at the end of a sentence. As long as they're consistent, I've got better things to worry about, like the content and clarity of their writing. What's bizarre to me is the fervor, bordering on vitriol, that the whole Single Or Double Space issue sparks. I understand personal preference, but I don't understand the need to ridicule and patronize people who disagree. We're talking personal taste here, not whether the earth is flat or round.

[RAM]

@mgmonklewis

What really pisses me off about contemporary magazine design is this trend towards intentionally blurring ad content with editorial content. These days, ads and story packages look a lot the same in many magazines and it's really annoying. Maybe I'm old-fashioned (oh, wait; I AM old-fashioned) but where I come from a reader ought to be able to tell whether whatever it is they're reading is advertising or news content without searching for a tiny little "Advertisement" label somewhere or other--if anyone even bothers to stick one in. If they'd quit doing that, I might not even care about double spaces after sentences. Or not care very much.

[Brooklyn Girl]

When I learned to type on a pre-Selectric typewriter, we were told to use two spaces. Now, two spaces looks like one too many.

[Hecate]

I do it and I'm going to keep on doing it because that extra bit of white space makes it more clear that a thought has ended and i'm for anything that makes it easier to understand my writing and, also, this is so stupid that only a bunch of Gen Xers could have thought it up and also get off of my lawn.

[Kaleberg]

The old rule was two spaces at the end of a sentence. I have no idea of why. Some people use fewer; some people use more. It's 1975 now, people use computers for typesetting. It should be the computer's job to figure out the spacing. Maybe it should be 1.5 spaces, or maybe it should depend on how the text fills the space. Why any human, let alone a typesetter who should have heard about computers by now, cares about this is beyond me.

[MichaelF]

I was taught by a person with extensive typing/secretarial experience to use two spaces, but that was back in the Stone Age of typewritten term papers. I'm a one spacer now.

[CK]

A pox on irregardless.

[Epicurus]

Proportional vs. monospace fonts; one space for the former, two for the latter. BTW, quit using monospaced fonts! They stink!! Move forward, people, don't keep doing things "because we always did it that way." It's called "evolution"...a concept troubling to many. And don't try convincing a lawyer of the correctness of this practice...believe me, I know.

[Luke]

Two spaces are needed in most legal writing, regardless of Slate.com's worrying about type settings and font types. The issue is with legal citations. For non-legal writers, there are issues of habit, which are pointless to criticize unless there is a reason for criticism. If you aren't a typesetter or printer who needs every valuable space available on a page of print, you have no reason to complain about two spaces. In any context other than printing, this entire debate is ridiculous. References to "evolution" in a debate between two positions with no actual consequence in the real world just sound silly, Epicurus.

[pansypoo]

fuck capitals.

[Henry Holland]

When I went to secretarial school in the mid-80's, I was taught two spaces and there it is. Since I always use right-justified formatting, it works itself out.

My big pet peeve is periods within quotation marks. "For example, this is what I mean."

That drives me nuts! Periods denote the end of sentences. Not quotation marks, periods. It should be and I do it this way: "And this is what I mean".

Great thread, A.

[Aaaargh]

Of course you use two spaces. All sensible people know that. Only these newfangled anarchist types use a single space.

Goddamnit, get off my lawn, you kids!