Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (spaces after a full stop/period)

One space after a period
NEW GUY (rob) I just want to say something here. When I was taught to type, the teachers said two spaces after a period and one after a comma. I cannot stand it when people type with only one space separating words. I guess its the way you type though so many people still do it.

double spacing after a period is, of course, the correct way to do it. Any one who says it isn't is stupid. I'm talking to you ADDY!

I have seen that in many articles there are two spaces after every period of a sentence. I personally can't stand the practice and I remove the extra space. However, I could see how this might not be a welcomed change by whoever put them there in the first place. Is there a policy about this specific issue? The manual of style page mentions this issue, but it does not say whether it should be used. I think we should be consistent, and most editors do not put the extra space, so it should probably be discouraged as a matter of policy. Dori 17:11, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)


 * I was always taught to put two spaces after a period when typing. I do that everywhere except Wikipedia, since people seem to be so opposed to it...I don't really know why that is, because it shows up the same in the end, doesn't it? It does for me, at least. Adam Bishop 17:17, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * I'd go for single space, but I'm not bothered by the double. jimfbleak 17:20, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * You are right, 2 spaces makes for easier reading. However, if these pages are rendered according to standard HTML rules (I think they are), you are both wasting your time. HTML ignores all series of spaces after the first one, so 2 spaces (or 10 spaces) are always displayed as one. - Marshman 17:25, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * You only see them in the editing window, right? -- Viajero 17:27, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * yes, I only notice them in the editing window. I just don't see the point and for some reason it bothers me (has anyone seen Monk?). Dori 17:29, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)


 * It is typically a US habit. Some editors even ADD a second space after a period automatically when paragraphs are reformatted. I think the practice dates from the monospace typewriter era. -- Viajero 17:42, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * I always use two in my usual typing, but in HTML it just doesn't matter at all, even to me, unless you use the &amp;nbsp; entity. Since it results in saving a little bit of space and bandwidth, I prefer the single space where it won't matter anyway, and will usually remove the double spaces in things I'm editing anyway. -- John Owens 18:18, 2003 Oct 25 (UTC)

It doesn't matter. Cf US vs UK spelling. If you want to add extra spaces, do so. If you want to delete extra spaces, do so. Just please don't get into an edit war over the situaton, and consider if there are more useful things you could be doing! Martin 18:31, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

It might matter to unfocused typists, as me. Some manoevres become automaized. A typical example might be the two spaces after a period-sign for US typewriters, or the space-before-{colon, exclamation mark, question mark} typical for French typists. Another example, relevant for me, is the process of inserting a carriage-return in a paragraph. Due to some reason, unknown to me, I've got used to making one jump forward from the period-sign before I hit the carriage-return buttom. If I write fast and don't concentrate on it, I won't discover that there is an extra space on the new line ...at least not until I've hit show-preview (if I'm lucky). --Ruhrjung 23:03, 25 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I personally like it, because it makes for easier automated parsing of sentences if that's ever desirable. If there's only one space after periods, you cannot easily distinguish an internal period (as in "e.g. blah") from a sentence-ending period. In a mono-spaced environment, it also makes it easier to read, and is standard typographic practice (in a non-mono-spaced environment, like LaTeX or professional typesetting, generally one-and-one-half space are used after sentence-ending periods). But in general I'd say good practice is to leave them as they are---don't go through and convert them from one to the other. --Delirium 23:16, Oct 25, 2003 (UTC)


 * It's interesting that you mention LaTeX in the same piece of text where you mention automated parsing. If you have noticed, TeX and LaTeX almost always get it right when determining whether a period ends a sentence or not - regardless whether a period is followed by one or more spaces. The main rule to follow is that period ends a sentence if it's followed by whitespace and a capital letter. Most internal periods aren't followed by space and a capital letter. Abigail 12:05, May 18, 2004 (UTC)


 * Except that the most common usage of internal spaces, titles such as Mr. Smith, are always followed by a space and a capital letter...


 * But traditionally MR Smith is spelt without the dot, which comes only at the end of a word which has been truncated, not at the end of every kind of abbreviation.

I was taught to type two spaces after a period. It would be virtually impossible for me to stop doing it, it's a reflex now. I'd also take it as an insult if someone were to go along behind me and change my two spaces to one. It's the same as if I were to go around to change all English spellings to American. Don't do it. RickK 02:14, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

If you don't want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then don't submit it here. --Ruhrjung 06:42, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * That's not what I meant at all. I am not going to edit an article just to remove double spaces. What I meant is if I am editing an article, in the part that I am editing, I like to remove the double spaces and I didn't want someone to get angry at me for this. As justification, I was saying that most articles do not have double spaces and if I remove them, it looks more consistent, and besides the spaces aren't even visible in the article so there is no point in putting them unless you are used to them. I wouldn't get angry at people who put them in, but I just can't help removing them, they look very wrong to me. Also, if someone edits an article I started and puts in two spaces in the stuff they add, I am not going to go and edit the article just to remove the double spaces. I only do it in the normal course of events. Dori 06:51, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)

Viajero is correct, it dates from the typewriter era (and maybe that article could explain a bit about the practice). It is not a US vs UK thing -- it was taught in the UK too. it was taught to me a mere 15 years ago. If it's still a habit, you're living in the past ;) RickK, if you can't unlearn it, get over the idea that people may remove them. -- Tarquin 09:50, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

I, too, was taught to type two spaces after a period. That was in the late fifties, as a matter of fact. As soon as I learned to type, I hardly ever used handwriting again. I typed, using two spaces after every period, through high school, through college, through graduate school. I typed two spaces after every period on punch cards, on paper tape, in FØRTRAN comments, in SNOBOL comments, in C comments, in every computer context that wasn't going to be parsed by machine. I typed two spaces after every period in TECO, in RUNOFF, in Word-11, in AppleWriter, in WordStar. It was a fixed habit that I probably practiced an average of several hundred times a day, every day, for over thirty years.

Then I got my first Macintosh, and discovered that typing two spaces after the period is not appropriate in proportionally-spaced type. (Which I should have known anyway, because I belonged to the high-school printing club and learned how to set type by hand in a composing stick).

At about the same time, I learned to use italics for emphasis instead of underlining, and that an open quote is different from a close quote.

Usages do change with time, and while I am a crotchety middle-aged guy who is set in his ways and has the illusion that he is Upholding Standards, I try not to be too hidebound about it.

And I have stopped typing two spaces after every period.

Because... it is incorrect.

It would never occur to me that it's worth changing anyone else's usage, however. Foolish consistency, hobgoblin of little minds, etc.

But, by Jingo, I still put an apostrophe in Hallowe’en and I defy anyone to stop me!

Dpbsmith 21:33, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Handwriting
If I were handwriting a letter (remember that?), I would instinctively add a greater amount of space after the end of a sentence, when compared to after an incidental full stop (such as in an abbreviation). The two spaces are just the electronic way of doing the same. I can't understand the people who use the that-was-for-typewriters-this-is-for-computers argument. People put two spaces on a typewriter because it helps to separate out full sentences, and by putting two spaces on a computer they're just trying to achieve the same effect.

I was taught to type two spaces after a period in the early 1990s, so it's certainly not archaic practice. And no, we didn't have typewriters either.--Delirium 22:34, Oct 26, 2003 (UTC)


 * I&rsquo;m surprised that so few people stopped to consider the possibility that there might be a reason why you were taught to use two spaces between sentences. I find that it&rsquo;s easier to read a block of text if there&rsquo;s more space between sentences than within.  The block scans into sentences automatically, and so greatly eases skimming through the text.  It&rsquo;s as simple as that.


 * For this reason, as has been pointed out, this usage is widely considered to be &ldquo;correct&rdquo; for monospaced text: it&rsquo;s used in, for instance, RFCs and texinfo documents, and often in e-mail, on Usenet, and to a lesser extent on IRC.


 * The bottom line for me, however, is the Emacs commands for moving between sentences: M-e moves forward one sentence and M-a moves back one sentence. These two commands are really handy.  If you need to navigate long, unbroken lines, like when editing Wikipedia, they are to live by.  Oh, but they only work properly when two spaces are put between each sentence.


 * &mdash;Daniel Brockman 09:25, Mar 7, 2004 (UTC)

I believe that two spaces after a period is appropriate for monospaced text, such as typing on a typewriter. But when you're working with proportional-spaced text on a web page (like here), the HTML renderer will ignore the number of spaces you use, and will instead put the proper amount of space after a period. You could use twenty spaces after a period, and there won't be any added space seen when you display the page. So the only effect of using more than one space here instead of one is to make your articles take up a trivial amount of extra space in the database. By the way, if you try to force extra space by adding '&amp;nbsp;', then you're going to confuse the HTML renderer and make it wrap words incorrectly, or put incorrect space at the beginning of a line. Brian Kendig 14:08, 11 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Of course, the editing textbox (which is the only place where it makes a difference whether you use two spaces or one), uses a monospaced font. So, by that rationale, it is correct to use two spaces, not one. I agree with the majority of others, though. Type it however you want, don't go around changing it for others. And certainly don't start an edit war over it. anthony (see warning) 02:38, 17 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You do realize, of course, that the edit window (the only place where this shows up) happens to be cast in a monospaced font? Therefore, it is actually standard that we put two spaces between our sentences. Falcon 20:19, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Modern proportional fonts have what's known as a "kerning table" that contains the optimum spacing for every possible combination of adjacent characters (including spaces). When authors create new fonts, they spend a lot of time compiling this information according to the actual shapes of their fonts' characters. When you stick in an extra space after a sentence, you defeat this wonderful capability the font's author worked so hard to include. But take heart: You've already made the far-more-challenging leap from typewriter to computer. (Well, I assume you have, if you're reading this.) Learning to drop that anachronistic extra keystroke is child's play by comparison. I know you can do it! –Ander


 * Well said Ander. As a professional typographer and type designer with over 35 years experience, I consider placing two spaces after periods to be an anachronistic typewriter convention perpetuated by high school teachers who don't know better. I suspect that the reason most people are taught to use two spaces in school is because their teachers were taught the same thing by their teachers (who probably used typewriters), who were taught by their teachers, and so on.


 * When personal computers finally brought real fonts and the capability to compose type to the masses, teachers and students who learned typing on typewriters failed to distinguish between the two. These people were suddenly introduced to real typography, but lacked training in the conventions associated with it. As a result double spaces, underlined text, double hyphens, straight quote marks, non-use of en and em dashes, apostrophes instead of prime marks, poor kerning, inappropriate leading, three periods instead of an ellipsis glyph, and almost every other sign of bad typography became common.


 * Fortunately, this ignorance of standard typographic conventions has not spilled over into professional publishing. Pick up any magazine, book, newspaper or professionally published and edited material of any kind, and look for two spaces after the periods &#8212; you won't find them, they're not there, they don't exist. Professional typographers, designers, copy editors and printers just don't use use them and never have. In fact, they routinely remove them during the copy editing process in much the same way that errors in punctuation and grammar are corrected.


 * I'm (unfortunately) old enough to have caught the tail end of hot metal typesetting. In those days there was a style in use at some type houses of inserting a space and an additional "thin space" after a sentence. The use of this extra thin space wasn't common and was often dependant upon the font. I never remember of an instance where someone thought it appropriate to put two spaces (or even a space and a half) after a period.


 * It's interesting that there are so many who lament the demise of the period followed by two spaces &#8212; not realizing that it is a convention that never existed, except in the old typewriter world. &#8212; Maylett 23:01, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

I wonder if this is still being watched but I've recently given this matter some thought and I think we need to ask how it was done with manually-set type. That usage answers other questions like the placement of a period inside quotation marks, and I would think that it would be fairly definitive here.

I was taught to use two spaces after a period when I learned to type back in high school in the early 1990s. It's second-nature to me to do it at this point. Personally, I prefer two spaces when working in a monospace area, but when reading something set in a variable-width typeface, I don't prefer one or the other. --Santiago22 12:36, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

AP Writing Sytle is one space after a period. 19 December 2006 -- Bear

Looking deeper into this subject I am fascinated by the two space origin. It is agreed that the typist used two spaces following a full stop (period) in the days of typewriters and monospace character sets. The majority of PC users are from a generation that never used these machines but yet the two space principal continues.... perhaps this is due to geriatric teaching at schools?

Today, with the prevalence of proportionally spaced fonts, I believe that the practice is no longer necessary and even detrimental to the appearance of text.

If you consider two spaces correct... does using three spaces make your sentence even more visible?

Martin, Hampshire, England - 21 March 2006

My biggest problem with only leaving one space at the end of a sentence is that it is often ambiguous. Two spaces indicate in a clear visual fashion that a sentence has ended. In most sentences this is not a problem, aided by the lowercase word prior to the period. But when it is a problem it is highly disruptive to the reader, forcing them to go back and reread a sentence or paragraph that was previously flowing smoothly. Why not continue to leave this easy and clear visual cue at the end of each sentence? Note that this is true in both proportional and monospaced fonts.

If computers were smart enough to read the sentence and appropriately place an additional half space on sentence ending periods (but leave mid-sentence periods with only one space) that would be wonderful. They aren't, and aren't likely to ever be. So why not use the simple human method of disambiguation?

Ambiguous sentence examples:

John Daymon, Rich Forst, and Amelia DeClemento are university students studying regional roseberry blossom cultivation in the U.S. West University sponsored their research and fully backs their findings.

As speeds improve, computer companies will increasingly use bit buffer-frame technology developed by the founder of ClockTech Inc. Maurice Muguyo, who founded Tick-Tock in 1998 to participate in the build up, moved to take the reins of ClockTech shortly afterwards.

Longtime residents, too, struggle to make ends meet and pay today's rents in S.F. Neighborhoods like Russian Hill have been seen increases of 30% over the past two years.

Reference: http://www.evolt.org/article/Two_Spaces_After_a_Period_Isn_t_Dead_Yet/25/213/index.html

Nick G., Brooklyn, NY, USA, 20:07 10-May-2006.


 * Considering that most text is in proportionally sized fonts, this is not an issue of readability, because the optimal space between characters is already coded into software. Hence, most Internet browsers will eliminate extra spaces. Using two spaces with a non-monospace font actually disrupts the flow of text. Ikasu (talk) 23:26, 6 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Ikasu, I understand your point but in Nick's example, are you telling us that the software knows that the sentence ending needs extra space than a regular "U.S." in the middle of the sentence, to disambiguate? If it does, it's screwed up and not working.  I slowed slightly reading the example and had to double-take, even though I knew it was coming (that's on the original proportional font page, not here!).  Two spaces helps the mind disambiguate.


 * I guess if you don't care how long it takes you to read, you don't care about utility as much as an aesthetic typesetting artiste might. Me though, I prefer to look at calligraphy for beauty and everything else to read.  I'm with two spaces for the visual cue - that's what the effective written word has always been.  I haven't seen a "one space" advocate address the visual cuing, other than with the ill-considered blanket statement of "it does it for you"; particularly problematic in the ambiguous cases here.  Though they ask for scientific study, for me it doesn't take a $200,000 taxpayer university grant to realize that what Nick mentions above creates problems.  Comes up in a lot of the technical writing I do.  Garykempen (talk) 21:22, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Two good articles on this topic...
Although Wikipedia contains spoilers, I will not reveal the recommendation made by these articles&mdash;other than to say their recommendations accord.


 * One Versus Two Spaces After a Period Lots of background in this one.
 * One Space or Two? This is from the folks who write the Chicago Manual of Style.

Dpbsmith 23:51, 26 Oct 2003 (UTC)


 * Great links :) Especially the Chicago Manual of Style Q&A page.


 * Wulf 05:38, 15 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I'll note however, that the LaTeX defaults are the opposite: they leave more space after periods than between words (not quite two; closer to one-and-one-half). I tend to like LaTeX's typesetting style, so use that. --Delirium 03:43, Oct 31, 2003 (UTC)


 * Apologies for the archive edit, but the second link is currently broken. That page is now located here: One Space or Two? -- HiEv 07:54, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Two spaces ease automation and editing
I agree with the comment that two spaces are preferable so that Emacs's sentence commands can find them. It's not just Emacs, though &mdash; any conceivable program for working with ASCII text is going to have problems working out what is a sentence and what isn't, if the same pattern that marks the end of a sentence is also used in mid-sentence, e.g. here. This is why I think that when typing on computers we should try to always use two spaces, to ease automated editing later. -- KarlNaylor 09:38, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * But it's bad typography. And you just get the same problem in reverse: if you modify all of the programs that display text so that they treat runs of more than one space as equivalent to a single space, they won't automatically know when they should do it and when they shouldn't. And to me, as a typist and a human being that must learn, it is unreasonable to expect me to consistently use two spaces when I'm in an environment that "knows" not to display them and when I'm in an environment that does display them.


 * Keyboards have a tab key as well as a spacebar, so we don't type runs of spaces when we need a tab. If the ability to automatically recognize ends of sentences is so darned important, then keyboards should have an "end of sentence" key that's distinct from the period.  And there is already an appropriate ASCII encoding for such things: unit separator, record separator, group separator, etc.


 * But as it is we have to live with the present system, in which all sorts of semantic and structural properties of text are hinted at by visual appearance and decoded by human pattern recognition, and it is extremely unlikely that declaring conventions which run contrary to general practice are going to influence the entire body of Wikipedia contributors to change their habits reliably.


 * In the meantime, I grew up typing two spaces after the period, it took me a long time to relearn and type a single space after the period, and I'm not going to retrain myself just to satisfy the needs of one specific text editing program (emacs), which I don't use. (I actually did use emacs for about a year and it made my left hand hurt so badly that I stopped. It was the first and so far only time in forty years of keying that I seriously considered getting medical advice. I'm surprised this isn't a problem for more emacs users, although key placement on the particular keyboard I was using could have been a factor, too). Dpbsmith 12:07, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * No, actually, it's not bad typography. In monospace, two spaces trailing a full-stop is typographically correct.  In so-called proportional typography, one and a half spaces trailing a full-stop is typographically correct.  The reason for this, historically, has to do with the fact that separate spacing pieces were created for printing machines, and when proportional typefaces were developed they were often only produced with one of each spacing piece type.  Thus, to indicate a greater spacing distance than a single space, the normal single space was coupled with a half-space.


 * Since the advent of word processing using non-monospace typefaces, it has become difficult to properly render a distance of one and a half spaces between sentences. As there was no Standards Committee on a podium directing people using word processors in the proper translation of spacing from traditional uses to new, inconveniently limited representation of typefacing such as Microsoft Word, some people have reverted to using two spaces for everything and others have shortened the spacing to one space, rounding down rather than up.  This is largely the fault of secretaries and other inexpert users of the English language whose profession involves typing, whereas scholars of prescriptivist punctuation usage have generally held that two spaces is the more appropriate use.  Recent years have seen more descriptivists rising in academia, proclaiming that language is mutable and trying to force it into certain paths according to trends, and probably motivated in part by the financial gains that arise when new style texts are needed.  While I personally regard the matter as trivial in the representation of proportional typefaces, my preference is definitely for something differentiated from spacing within a sentence.


 * Historically speaking, two spaces trailing a full-stop is more correct than one space, as the use of one and a half spaces is derived from the use of two spaces even in proportional fonts, and it has never become proper practice to use a single space between sentences in monospace typefaces. Additionally, since there isn't a specific, official guidance with any authority on how to translate one and a half spaces, and it is not as easy to learn to type with any facility such that monospace always gets two spaces and proportional always gets one, I find it advantageous to become used to using two spaces.


 * In using the HTML non-breaking space entity, the proper way to do so (if you choose that standard of use) is to affix one non-breaking space after the full-stop and one normal space following that. This allows for linebreaks to occur between sentences without shifting inappropriate leading spaces to the next line.  Generally speaking, however, since standards-compliant HTML treats whitespace as immaterial beyond the first hard space, it is appropriate in writing HTML to simply avoid making a distinction in the source and allow it to render as a single space at the end of a sentence.


 * Thus, in summary, two spaces after the full-stop to separate sentences is more correct, but immaterial in most HTML applications. apotheon 16:48, 29 May 2004 (EST)

I am involved in editing tests and other materials for children, which include fairly long passages too. One of my standard editing practices when I get a file is to replace all double spaces with single spaces!! Personally I find double spaces anywhere, a space before a comma, colon, exclamation mark, etc. all quite irritating.. (something like a spelling error:-)) Note that in most of these documents, double spaces represent oversight or error in typing rather than something consciously done. Sridharei 07:17, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)


 * Anybody convinced that the MLA's two spacing rule is logical should read this. The two spacing rule has nothing to do with monospaced fonts or typewriters.  It has to do with readability.  By using only one space per sentence, you are reducing readability.  I think the example sentence in that article is one the most damning pieces of evidence on the subject.  Another is the fact that a proportional-spaced font does not "increase the spacing between periods".  In fact, the single space on a PS font is much less than the spacing of a MS font, so the difference between the spacing on a single-spaced sentence is even less than the average letter.  When reading a PS single-spaced sentence, it can be hard to tell the difference between comma-space and period-space, or period-space (in reference to an acronym) and period-space (in reference to a sentence ending).  With period-space-space, you know that it is the next sentence, without any room for confusion.  -- SineSwiper 03:35, 10 Feb 2005 (EST)

You say I should read it; I suggest you look at it from a page designer's viewpoint, and you may begin to understand why, for professional typesetting, a single space has always been the norm. Double spaces have been forced in the HTML, and as a result, the type on the page, viewed as a whole, is "mottled" with white space. A page designer generally finds such holes in the text to be unattractive. Single-spaced text fills the text areas with a more pleasing uniform "tone." Bustter 15:45, 6 August 2006 (UTC)


 * If a designer finds monospace "more pleasing", but I'm trying to read it to get a concept and the pleasing appearance makes it more difficult to get into my brain, who's right? Depends on the purpose.  Calligraphy should go with pleasing; typesetting depends on your target audience.  Do you cater to pretty pictures, or communication of thought?  You decide.  I have a preferred target audience that's probably obvious from what I'm writing.  Garykempen (talk) 21:32, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

Better Questions to be Asking
I'm commenting very late on this, I know, but what seems to have been overlooked in all previous discussion of this issue is that the mere phrasing of the questions and opinions herein in terms of "spaces" implies that "space" is a character like any other, and that its width is necessarily constant. While it is true that it has historically been implemented this way on keyboards, in character encodings, and in publications both tangible and virtual for reasons that date back to the advent of the printing press, it is still just a one-size-fits-all approximation of inter-word space. This is just one of several uses of "white space" in the Latin/Roman writing system (script) that we use in English and other Western European languages. HTML 4 acknowledged this point, and actually considers a space character (or runs of consecutive space characters) to represent a word separator that is actually to be rendered as appropriate for the language in use.

So, when rendering text in those languages and scripts in which words are not normally separated by the familiar en-dash sized horizontal gap, the "number of spaces" question is reduced to "what's an appropriate way to render the words on either side of this separator?". Instead of asking "one [fixed-width, generic] space or two after a full stop?", instead ask (1) what is the amount of horizontal space (NOT in terms of fixed-width space characters) after a full stop in handwritten text in the English language, (2) how closely should typeset text reproduce this (e.g., how do kerning and other characteristics of the typeface factor into the appropriate amount of space), (3) how can we best approximate this space using the tools at our disposal, and (4) how should text rendering engines like those used in web browsers be improved to make things better (e.g., can they be made able to recognize the difference between inter-word space and inter-sentence space and other kinds of space, and make adjustments accordingly?).

Granted, this may not have any bearing on what goes on in Wikipedia today, but I feel that if people are going to discuss ideal spacing in general, they should not be thinking that all spaces are created equal and that the only question is how many of them to put in a row. - mjb 07:41, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Having just spend two days going through and revising a document for publication that was typed by an experienced typist who cannot learn to not type two space, I also feel that the double space is a glaring error in most documents in these times. Years ago I automatically added two spaces always, having learnt that rule when using a manual typewriter (even though I cannot touch type). It should also be pointed out (as above) that not all machines considered a space a character even before computers. The mechanical hot-lead Linotype machine, which was used for many years (from 1882) for newspaper and book compositing, created molds (matrices) of lines of text one character at a time, and then poured hot lead into them, the lead being later inked for printing. But the spaces were in fact wedges that could be pushed into the line a variable amount to make micro-adjustments of the word spacing. Brat32 05:16, 10 August 2005 (UTC)

See Full_stop.

Two Spaces
For my two cents, I prefer two spaces. For me they are useful when skimming or speed reading as it makes it easier to recognize sentance structures.

I was also taught that two spaces are proper and have the combonation of "period + space + space" engrained in my motor memory. After 16 years of typing, it would take a bit to unlearn this behavior.

N8dawg 22:47, 31 May 2006 (UTC)


 * I am a staunch supporter of the single-space following a period rule. Yes, I also learned to use two spaces when taught typing back in 1974! That time is long past, and should stay that way. The deciding factor for me was Robin Williams' books, "The Mac is Not a Typewriter" ISBN 0201782634 and "The PC is Not a Typewriter" ISBN 0938151495. These books go into great detail how the Personal Computer age is different from the Smith-Corona age. When editing a page/section, as a matter of course, I do remove extra spaces. Alan 03:24, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Archive?
This is not an actual archive, is it? If it is, then there seems to be no current version...Ardric47 07:49, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Another latecomer
Just want to break a lance in favour of Maylett, et al. above, regarding their observations on the unecessary use of double spaces after full stops. While I can understand the traditionalists' points of view (no pun intended), I think that certain conventions are perpetuated unecessarily in all aspects of life (don't psychologists refer to conservative adjustments?). I spend a lot of my spare time anonymously tidying up article pages - there are one helluva lotta typos out there - and whilst I'm at it, remove extra spaces which appear in many weird places between words in general, and even in the same paragraph obviously written by the same contributor (I have actually checked this on the history log of many articles, just out of morbid interest), I often come across inconsistent use of single or double spaces after full stops.

Just by way of - unrelated, but illustrative - example of weirdo things that we do without thinking, or out of a blind faith in what we have been taught, since the beginning of typewriting, Spanish teachers, not only of typing but also of the language itself, have taught that the tilde (´) was not necessary when using (typing and handwriting) capital letters. This apparently came about because typewriter keys physically prevented the combination, and the convention was perpetuated until modern times, by which I mean today. The result is that most Spaniards - regardless of their level of education - erroneously and honestly believe that they can write words like hábito, habito and habitó, all of which have differing meanings, as one HABITO. And the computer spell-checker is of course useless in such cases.

If writing - as opposed to the spoken word - has as its main purpose that of avoiding any possible confusion being created in the person at the receiving end, it must obviously do so by excluding any elements which might distract the eye.

However, as this kind of debate may eventually lead to blood being shed by diehards who miss the point entirely, and arguments are often won by those who bang their fists on the table more vehemently, in the interest of world peace and brevity (wikipedia's talk page guidelines suggest no more than 100 words for a note on a talk page), I would like to suggest that from now on we all dedicait much more of our spare time to corrrecting soem of the realy sereious misteakes in puncntuasion, grammer, ect. that abownd in this wondrerful comon prodject that we are fortunat enugh to shaire.

I hereby solemnly swear that I shall resist all temptation to add another word to this talk page. Thanks you for bearing with me. 83.180.179.143 23:42, 2 December 2006 (UTC)