One or Two Spaces After a Period?
Posted on May 30th, 2006 in Usability | 26 Comments »
From a WebWord reader:
“My boss insists that the correct way of typing is to use two (2) spaces after a period or colon. I have read the information on your website, and would like you to confirm that using one space is the correct way to type.”
This really tickles me. The issue won’t die. Probably never will. In any event, here’s my response:
“It depends.”
My best advice is to review my report:
One Versus Two Spaces After a Period
http://www.webword.com/reports/period.html
Some people believe that two (2) spaces is correct whereas others think that one (1) space is correct. I think it all depends on the medium, the author, and the audience.
- One the web (i.e., HTML), one space is probably best.
- For Microsoft Word, one space is usually best.
- For ASCII text (i.e., monospaced font), one or two is fine.
There’s no general correct answer although, I will say that one (1) space seems to be most dominant and getting more dominant every day.
- John
John S. Rhodes
“Industrial Strength Usability”
http://webword.com
26 Responses
can I be the first to say… honestly.. who gives a rat’s a$$?
i know, it’s not very technical.
but seriously. With all the problems we have to solve….?
Well, since legibility is a key usability topic, and this is actually a core legibility topic, at least a few rat’s rear ends should be sacrificed.
Page layout applications such as InDesign (and possibly Word) actually apply intelligence in such cases, so inserting 2 spaces is strongly counter-productive.
I’m amused by this topic. The two first postings here indicate that this is something people are still passionate about. (I wrote the report back in 1999.)
Is it wrong of me to say that I agree with both Leisa and David? There are more important issues to tackle but at the same time we still need to pay attention to the (devilish) details.
Due to whitespace-reduction rules, you cannot generate two wordspaces in HTML unless one of them is, for example, a nonbreaking space. This is one thing the HTML spec gets right. You can type as many wordspaces as you want (also, in compliant browsers, tabs and carriage returns) and it all gets reduced to a single space.
From a purely usability perspective – one is the way to go. Just imagine the trouble and errors that will come from having to type two spaces.
BTW: Word can be set to automatically add double spaces after a period – using autocorrection.
Anyway, I believe this “rule” comes from the days before we had things like kerning. I do not believe it to be relevant today. I know for sure that I would completely ignore any person telling me to use double spaces.
The question isn’t what typists should do, but what the software that renders the text should do. Long ago, I learned to type 2 spaces (I don’t remember why) and it’s an impossible habit to break. It shouldn’t matter.
If you really want to get anal, here’s a great reference … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_stop. I’m a one space guy myself unless I’m using a manual typewriter in which case 2 spaces is the norm. And what’s wrong with debating the (seemingly) trivial? It’s nice to have a gentle skirmish every now and again rather than constant full-on battle.
I much dislike seeing a double space after a full stop. This is more of a nitpicky thing of mine just because I know it’s an outdated practise and I think it’s useless and regressive to continue outdated practises simply out of habit, when there is no further need for them. But perhaps I’m just unnecessarily strict when it comes to grammar and punctuation.
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But perhaps I’m just unnecessarily strict when it comes to grammar and punctuation.
You cannot globally correct for two spaces after a sentence in MS Word because not all sentences end with periods and not all periods end sentences. This is the main reason I use one space along with typsetting programs and web conventions desiring only one word space between sentences: it’s easy to search for two spaces and replace them with one. It’s not easy to do it the other way around.
Diane, what about putting two spaces after a colon like you just did. I use two spaces for both colons and sentences because of habit; it’s just what I was taught. As for being outdated, I’m only 22 so I dont see how accurate that statement is if they were still teaching it in high school 5 years ago. However, I may just switch to 1 space because I am trying to post my personal statement for medical school and it limits by characters including spaces.
2 spaces just reads easier. I will never stop typing two spaces after a period!
Two spaces lives!
What a funny conversation! I’m just now learning that one space after a period is the “best” way to go. My friend is a journalism major and was told by her TA that it is wrong to use 2 spaces. Like Mike above, my friend and I are 22 and were taught to insert 2 spaces at the end of a sentence. I hope potential employers don’t look down upon me because I rock the 2 spaces in my cover letters. It’s a habit I don’t think I’ll be able to break. Not until they come out with the patch or inhaler.
I don’t understand why there is some sort of obtuse movement to remove the practice of using 2 spaces after a period. If the websites “clean” them, which is annoying, and no one needs to read what another writes, who should care? I prefer 2 spaces because it is a thousand times easier to read. I like to scan for the next sentence sometimes and especially with Proportional font sizes, the period has almost no horizontal weight, and therefore easily slips into a sentence barely making a gap of any kind.
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Two spaces is much easier to read. It, also, makes editing easier if two spaces are maintained. Another thing is that it is annoying to see another way in which we are dumbed down. The internet has allowed people to create a form of bastardized writing that is unacceptable. Individual letters are not English. Capital letters are in place for a reason. It is all quite sad, & pathetic.
It is so hard to read a paragraph with one space after the period, particularly in today’s variable-width fonts because the period holds such little horizontal weight! I wish the internet would stop depreciating our writing standards, or maybe people are to blame as they are letting the internet have its way.
Two spaces. Period. And then two spaces. (Unless HTML doesn’t allow it.)
I was always taught two spaces. It reads easier because sometimes there are periods encountered in a sentence which do not indicate the end of the sentence (abbreviations like a.m., ave., mrs., etc.). Also, it makes it hard to confuse a period with a comma.
An initial of a person’s name is another example of a period followed by one space within a sentence.
I think period-space-space is used exclusively for ending sentences–are there any counter-examples?
Well look at that, another double-character combination: a hyphen-hyphen as a dash!
The website reduced the two spaces and the two hyphens. Let’s see if it alters a quotation too:
“An initial of a person’s name is another example of a period followed by one space within a sentence.
I think period-space-space is used exclusively for ending sentences–are there any counter-examples?
Well look at that, another double-character combination: a hyphen-hyphen as a dash!”
“It, also, makes editing easier if two spaces are maintained.”
“It is all quite sad, & pathetic.”
If you’re going to attack people’s writing, you ought to write correctly yourself. Are you one of the people who thinks a comma used is never a comma wasted?
Although I did not read all of the comments, I see that the main response and many of the others revolve around the technical medium. The thing to remember is the human element. The reason for two spaces is to allow the eye / brain to understand the full stop at the end of a complete thought. This occurs at the end of a sentence indicated by a period or at the beginning of a listing indicated by a colon. Forget about whoever programmed microsoft or any other IT product. Remember the human.
One thing to note is that in newspapers / magazines, one space is sometimes used because the columns are so narrow. And it works more easily therein for the eye / brain connection as the lines are not as long as in most texts.
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2 spaces is still used in the legal profession (or at least while you’re in law school lol). I’m a 1L and your legal writing grade will suffer if you use single spacing in a legal memo, brief, etc. SMH