Two spaces after a full stop.

monkeyfudge

Not sure if this is quite the right forum... but it's about the closest I could think of.

But when you are learning typing they tell you to put 2 spaces after a full stop. But does anyone in the real world actually follow this rule? Is it even actually a rule? Or is it just a touch typing thing...

Would anyone care to enlighten me?

Praetorian

One space after a full stop. Like that.

Not like this.This is wrong.

This is also wrong. In my opinion.

Earthhorse

I think, but can't be one hundred per cent sure, that this was something to do with the way old typewriters were set up. Something along the lines of the space after the full stop not being sufficient and just looking wrong (ie the text was too crowded on the page).

With the dawn of modern word processing and printing there is no longer a need for the double space as far as I know.

monkeyfudge

Earthhorse wrote:

I think, but can't be one hundred per cent sure, that this was something to do with the way old typewriters were set up. Something along the lines of the space after the full stop not being sufficient and just looking wrong (ie the text was too crowded on the page).

With the dawn of modern word processing and printing there is no longer a need for the double space as far as I know.

Well this is what I thought... but it still seems to be a requirement.

Mavis Beacon for instance will penalise you for not putting two spaces after a full stop.

I've certainly never read any books or magazines that have two spaces after a full stop.... so I really don't understand why their is an insistance on it...

ecksor

I still automatically put in a double space after a full stop since that was what I learned in typing class. Doesn't bother me since I try to demarcate bits of text in a clear way anyway.

monkeyfudge

Is it really necessary to teach that standard in typing these days anyway...?

It only really makes sense if you are using a monospace font, which in a word proecessor very few people do. I'm sure all those extra keystrokes can really eat into your WPM in the end.

DublinWriter

I was 'thought' to type and it was always a single space after a full-stop.

Hagar

Pity you weren't "taught" to spell..

simu

Oh, I always follow that rule. One space after a comma and two after a full stop. I believe it looks far better too.

nesf

I've always used one space. But then the only formal typing I was doing for years was fully justified stuff, which makes it a bit of a non issue tbh.

Typing for online stuff, like here, I've a bad habit of not paying a lot of attention to punctuation etc. So I've never really given it a lot of thought.

I probably should though.

Earthhorse

Admittedly, having learned to type myself, I put the double space in for many years. Then our company sent a memo round saying we should no longer do so and I fell out of the habit.

It seems, from a quick google, that the matter is really still open for debate, http://www.professorbainbridge.com/2004/09/how_many_spaces.html, though to be honest I can't say I've found ecksor or simu's posts any more readable than anyone elses, from an aesthetic point of view.

ecksor

Try harder.

nesf

Had a brief discussion with a few of my friends who either work professionally as writers, or who work in their spare time as such, and they seemed to be split down the middle on this.

From what they told me, it varies from publisher to publisher which way they want it. There wasn't a standard across publishing houses in their opinion. This suprised me tbh, because I had assumed there was a standard for this. I had a scan through my Oxford Guide to Style and couldn't find any reference to two spaces being standard.


From a readability point of view, I don't personally notice much when people are not using mono-spaced fonts. When people are using proportional fonts it doesn't change a pieces readability, for me. But considering that there are times where you are using mono-spaced fonts, I could see why people still hold to the convention.

nesf

This, for example, is a lot less readable. I find this much more tiring to read. The lack of a double space makes it tougher to seperate sentences, if you are reading quickly.

Eoin

nesf wrote:

This, for example, is a lot less readable. I find this much more tiring to read. The lack of a double space makes it tougher to seperate sentences, if you are reading quickly.

I find that font itself hard on the eyes rather than the lack of spacing.

AFAIK, HTML will not display two spaces in a row* so double spacing will not appear online anyway.



* unless the text is wrapped in a <pre> tag or the   entity is used instead.

Praetorian

So I think we'll have to agree that it is down to personal preference. There is no correct answer. One space after a full stop probably saves time, some people believe it is unsightly but even these people are getting used to one space because web browsers don't generally display the 2nd space.

I taught myself how to touch type when I was about 13, so I never bothered going to typing class. I just sat the exam

Talliesin

Style guides will often suggest that two spaces follow a sentence with monospaced fonts (which is what almost all manual typewriters use).

Style guides differ more in the case of variable width fonts, but generally favour a single space, allowing the kerning of the font to style the text appropriately.

An important influence in the typographical debate is that Donald Knuth implemented a rule in TeX that allowed for extra whitespace following a sentence, and Knuth remains very influential in the field of computer typography. However this extra whitespace is a matter of the formatting of the page, not of the content, and so arguably the correct way to input it is to type one space and let the computer deal with the matter of how styles are applied to that content.

With most variable width fonts the kerning on the sentence-terminating punctuation (? ! .) is such that it should look correct with just a single space following.

A common use for monospace fonts these days is in programming, where whitespace is often used to make text more readable in a manner that does not translate entirely into concerns for English-language typography.

In most cases HTML and XML will render so that extra spaces in the source are folded into one, so it doesn't matter how many spaces you type.

In all, I'd favour typing a single space.

nesf

TeX is extremely influential in science. LaTeX is almost universally used by people who have to write forumlae often in their papers. Or at least that's how it was in UCC and with the other science ppls i know.