Thoughts, ponderings, reflections.

50 words or less: "thoughts" is the personal blog of Kevin D. Hendricks and has covered writing, pop culture, technology, spirituality and navel-gazing since 1998. Kevin does writing and editing with his company, Monkey Outta Nowhere, and in case you couldn't tell these thoughts reflect his personal views.

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How Many Spaces After a Period?

May 2nd, 2007 Posted in Writing

It’s been an issue of great debate in both my professional and personal life: how many spaces should you put after a period?

Some people prefer two spaces, some prefer one. You can read all sorts of background and history and opinions on this.

But it comes down to this: two spaces is a relic from the days of typewriters. It’s no longer necessary in today’s world of word processors and can actually muck things up. It doesn’t even transfer to the Internet–HTML actually ignores more than one space in a row. You have to force HTML to display two spaces by entering code for a non-breaking space, and that’s way too much work.

So please. Stop with the two spaces. I know you learned on a typewriter (like me) and a teacher hammered it into habit. But that doesn’t make it right. At the very least stop insisting other people follow your out-moded style. It’s about as effective as using whiteout to fix mistakes on your screen.

Thanks. I feel better now.

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  1. 7 Responses to “How Many Spaces After a Period?”

  2. By dave on May 2, 2007

    Jaime and I have had this same argument before with one of our friends who is a teacher. As I understand it, the double-space is MLA style, so it’s still used in the educational sphere. Thankfully, Jaime and I were both taught AP style in college and had it drilled in to the point where a double-space looks as wrong as a spelling error.

  3. By Josh on May 3, 2007

    Amen! Preach it brother!

    I think I stopped using double spaces around the same time I stopped using cursive. It’s a totally useless rule, and as you pointed out, it won’t even work on the web, where I do most of my reading and writing.

  4. By Steph on May 4, 2007

    As a person who switches between academic & web spheres, I always mess it up. I type so fast that I throw in 2 sometimes when I should have 1, and vice versa. My friend is a writer and when we work on projects together, she’s always reaming my extra spaces. It’s a tough habit to break. I just realized I even typed this entry with two spaces between each sentence (not that you’d see it). Gah!

  5. By kevin on May 4, 2007

    I don’t mind so much when people don’t care. It’s the people who insist on doing it the two-spaces way that drive me nuts.

  6. By law student on Sep 11, 2007

    While discussing this during an informal editing meeting the other day, one of my colleagues notified me that “double-spacing is the mark of good breeding and higher education.” That settled the debate for me. Her comment was sufficiently snarky to make me value my public school education even more. If double-spacing puts me in her camp, I’m sticking with the single.

  7. By Ranjit on Apr 22, 2008

    double space writing is the proper MLA format. 2 spaces after a period and one after a comma. it makes your report look better and professional

  8. By jaime on Apr 22, 2008

    “double-spacing is the mark of good breeding and higher education.” ???

    I am so glad I don’t double space. :)

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