To double space after a period or not to. That is no longer a question.
The answer is unequivocally no. There is only one space after a period. Period. You may argue. You may moan. You may claim that you cannot be taught new tricks and it looks fine to you, but if you double space — especially in published work — you will be wrong.
An example of a feed from a WordPress post showing two spaces after a period, as copied in from MSWord
You may say you don’t care. That you can’t do it. That there is no way you can retrain that thumb of yours, but you can. I know this because I did it.
And you might have to start caring, because it’s already starting to matter more than just displaying awkward, I-learned-to-type-on-a-Smith-Corona spacing. Your extra space has already started to render funky online. Just today on a feed from a WordPress blog post, the double space came through on Firefox with a capital A with a little do-hickey on top of it in place of the first space. The line looked most odd. We immediately corrected it for the client. (I went ahead and recreated the issue as an example and posted it at right.) We also spend billable time whenever she (and a dozen others) send in excerpts by running a search and replace, two spaces for one.
The double space also going to hurt you on your résumé. If you double space, it means you learned to type before desktop publishing. Ageism isn’t legal, but if you look old school, you look old school.
I come to this post with some solid backing. I spent all of, oh, ten minutes searching the web for authority, rather than opinion. I pulled the following from the Carnegie-Mellon Punctuation Primer:
Spacing at End of Sentence
Use a single space at the end of a sentence and after a colon. Double spaces date back to the days of typewriters, when all characters were allotted the same amount of space. Computerized typesetting adjusts the spacing for a good fit. Extra spaces create gaps and look unprofessional.
And from the Chicago Manual of Style Q+A (no subscription required), there is a list of five reasons not to double space. If you want to dig deeper (and if you pay for a subscription), you can read the bit entitled “single (not double) space after period.”
So, how do you space?
And if you double down, do you care that you’re wrong?
5 Comments
I remember, however many years ago it was, when I had to re-train myself. It was a pain, but now it is second nature.
Speaking as someone who receives content in from clients for Wax, I can confirm from experience — the time it takes to re-format can really add up.
One of my pet peeves is receiving a highly-formatted Word doc, with double line spacing and indents and special paragraph styles and (shudder) bulleted lists. When you copy from Word, you unwittingly copy a whole bunch of behind-the-scenes code. Placing that content onto a web page is not as easy as copy and paste — a DE-formatting process is required. And many a time I’ve received SOS emails from clients who have posted to their blog only to have the font appear completely wacky on the live page. My first response is always, “Did you copy directly from Word?” Luckily, WordPress, the platform we use for our clients’ blogs (and our own) has a built in “paste from Word” function that strips all formatting.
I could go on and on, but I won’t subject you to my ramblings…
Admitting you have a…sniff, problem is half of the battle, is it not? In that spirit:
“Hi. My name is Hope Tarr and I am a double spacer.”
I am from the era of the Smith-Corona, liquid White-Out, and yes, correction tape. I remember the agony and ecstacy of eraseable “onion skin” paper. I don’t only know what a mimeograph machine is, but I know how to use one. My first “computer” was a VAX/VMS mainframe. Back in those Word Starry nights, we thought personal computers were a short-lived fad.
Double spacing after a period was drilled into us as babes. Even though I’m a pick-and-pecker, double spacing just feels so…right.
But now thanks to Wax I have come to see the error of my ways. Beyond wanting to be current and yes correct, I dread the fact that all these years I have been typing well, old.
Only now I am committed to doing better, to doing right. Just as I wouldn’t be caught dead (or alive) tooling around the city in opaque tights or a “pot holder” vest, I am putting my double spacing days behind me. For good.
Whew, confession really is good for the soul.
I typically don’t double space. I’ve always been in the habit of not doing it. Only when I began writing did I learn it was the manuscript format. Even now, I often don’t do it.
In word, I always clear the styling and that seems to help…some hehe.
I’m a single spacer, and I love Notepad. (Oops! Did I just admit that in writing? Don’t tell my hubby tho.)
When I need to copy from HTML or Rich-text formatted docs, I paste into Notepad first, then copy that and paste it wherever I need to.
Then again, I’m a command-prompt-lovin’, raw-HTML-codin’ kinda gal. So I may just be a nut job.
Congrats to you all for your typing confessions. Keira, loving Notepad is okay (really, it is!). Hope, I also have White-Out in my desk. Haven, stay the course. Don’t go back to the double-space. Be strong. And Abi… Abi. Thanks for taking care of us all.