# Are you a single, or two-spacer? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [May 9, 2018, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835 "2018-05-09T00:25:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![Tzigone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Tzigone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzigone)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/141 "2018-05-11T00:54:00Z")
2-spacer. Learned that way when learning typing in high school (on ancient PCs without installed programs). Now do so out of habit. I have occasionally, purposefully single-spaced because it became the done thing, and of course, typos cause single-spaces sometimes, too. I also still capitalize Internet fairly often, because that’s how I was taught (an internet v. the Internet). It’s not that I think my way is correct, it’s just an old habit that I don’t really care about overcoming. ---
**Author:** ![Enola\_Gay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/3ab097/32.png) [@Enola\_Gay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Enola_Gay)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/142 "2018-05-11T00:55:57Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Whatever. I’m still waiting for an answer for why people who do it for other than old habit do it (which I already acknowledged), and where they expect to see the output. You will not get your answer because there IS NO rational answer to your question. The double spacer group is a stubborn lot, desperately clinging to the past regardless of practicality. Double spacing will only cease when they die off. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/143 "2018-05-11T01:11:33Z")
> [@Enola\_Gay](#): > > The double spacer group is a stubborn lot, desperately clinging to the past regardless of practicality. Double spacing will only cease when they die off. Won’t happen. My plans for immortality are already in place. ---
**Author:** ![Tzigone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Tzigone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tzigone)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/144 "2018-05-11T01:11:47Z")
EDIT: Never mind. No point. ---
**Author:** ![jaycat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jaycat/32/3015_2.png) [@jaycat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jaycat)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/145 "2018-05-11T01:44:35Z")
> [@rbroome](#): > > Once I realized that literally every book I have ever read uses one space and it is the typographically correct standard, I started using 1 space to make my writing look more professional. It is usually easy to fix in documents, global search and replace for 2 spaces-unless the original author uses spaces instead of tabs. At that point it is usually easier to just throw the draft in the trash and start over. Correct. When in doubt regarding typographical issues, consult your local library book. Justified paragraphs, serif type, single spacing, etc… ---
**Author:** ![smithsb](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smithsb/32/12107_2.png) [@smithsb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smithsb)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 7:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/146 "2018-05-11T07:27:07Z")
All you double spacers are just making it easier to round you up when the reckoning comes. :eek: Just a little something for your kind to sleep on tonight. And that extra space takes up bits. Bits are electrons and photons and stuff. Extra thems are contributing to global climate change. Save the planet, will ya? :mad: ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 7:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/147 "2018-05-11T07:59:54Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Thanks for reading the thread before posting. All 127 posts? ---
**Author:** ![sabernode](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/278dde/32.png) [@sabernode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sabernode)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/148 "2018-05-11T08:46:06Z")
No doubt, a two spacer… ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/149 "2018-05-11T12:24:14Z")
> [@Tripler](#): > > If there was a poll function, I’d try it. \ “Were”, surely? > [@](#): > > I’m a die hard double-spacer. And I use semicolons on long-running inclusive sentences. And I use the Oxford comma. I used to be a diehard double-spacer, having originally learned to type on a manual typewriter (“Tell us about key jams, Grandpa!”) but now I adapt to the medium. If the gap between sentences doesn’t look right, I’ll double-space but since most WPs adjust automatically I usually single-space now. But yeah: semicolons and Oxford commas. As a possible holdover from previous practice, in texting I prefer to use the “double-space to get a period-and-space” function (but never use “txtspk” because it increases my blood pressure to do so). ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/150 "2018-05-11T12:49:57Z")
Oh, I’m a double-spacer all right. It’s in my blood. Dad was a newspaperman. There is a proper way to compose a sentence, a paragraph and a page. Then there’s the way they do it in New Jersey. Damned Visigoths. There is a direct correlation between the physical presentation of sentences on a page and the development of the spoken word out loud. You may be an ardent fan of ee cummings but I defy anyone to read more than a few lines of prose without inhaling. And thinking. Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/151 "2018-05-11T18:25:04Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I’m quoting you for convenience, but I’m addressing this to every other supporter of double-spaces. > > If the final product is going to have one space - and all final products these days with the tiniest percentage of exceptions use the one space rule - why would you insist on double spaces? Why? Nothing you’ll ever see or use or give to someone else will ever have two spaces after periods. > > I can sort of understand people being taught to do this in this old days on typewriters and just letting the habit ride. But to insist upon it is, IMO, madness. I cannot understand it. I mean, I literally cannot think of one reason to justify this practice. It can’t possibly be to give manuscripts to editors. Again, except for a couple of arcane places, no editor in the world will want this and many go out of their way to decry manuscripts done with two spaces. In an increasingly electronic world, with virtually everything arriving through browsers, it is impossible without great effort even to force two spaces upon a reader. So why start there? > > What is going on? Interesting you say that. The prominent kinds of writing I’ve done in my life have been, in the following order: Papers for school Two novels Ebook versions of the two novels. In the papers for school the two spaces were of course preserved; I typed them; the word processor printed them. The novels, which were also typed and formatted in a word processor, operated similarly (once I fired my friend) - the printed books have nice clear spaces after each sentence. And the ebooks - well. By default, ebooks tend to have _no respect at all_ for formatting preferences of the author. They (always?) let you have italics and bold, but beyond that, no. The idea of course is that a bunch of weirdos are going to be reading them on phones and such, and so they’re going to have to reformat like crazy to make things fit anyway, not to mention that they let the reader change the fonts. So, generally speaking, ebooks like to boil your document down to vanilla text. Generally speaking. As it turns out there _are_ ways to force the issue, in some ereader formats - fortunately including the one Amazon prefers. And, yes, with a bit of work it was possible to make it retain the double-spaces after each sentences, _and_ my font preferences (the font options are somewhat limited, but had enough flexibility to be tolerable). If I couldn’t have gotten the ebooks to support my formatting choices, notably including the double spaces, I wouldn’t have released by books on ebook. That is shit with which I will not up put, at least not regarding my precious books. I do put up with it on this message board (and the one single webcomic comment section I post in), largely because I don’t have a choice. HTML has the same natural utter disrespect for formatting as ebooks, for largely the same reasons - and/or that the people designing it assumed that everyone using it were idiots who couldn’t type properly. (Hey, I’ve seen how people both use programs and write code. It’s a plausible explanation.) Since then they’ve largely patched back in ways to do most formating -fonts, sizes, columns, blink tags- but html still consumes ‘excess whitespace’, possibly because of satan. Forums like this inherit that ‘functionality’. Decent people grudgingly put up with it. But outside of here (and that one comment section) I don’t use any writing platforms that piss on my formatting. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/152 "2018-05-11T18:35:01Z")
> [@Saltire](#): > > I prefer to use the spacing built into the font, unless something looks really weird and needs manual adjustment. The fonts you’re probably talking about, proportional fonts, don’t have spacing “built into the font”. If you’re operating on the assumption they do, you may be using the same awful counterfactual arguments I’ve head from other people. On examination of the facts, the actual reason the single-space approach was used was the people in question _didn’t like whitespace_. It was an esthetic preference. Full stop. When they say that characters in the font “include spacing”, they really mean “periods and commas are short, so no extra spaces for you. Yes, exclamation marks and question marks aren’t short, but \*still \*no extra spaces for you, because _we hate spaces, because spaces killed our mother_.” It would be like if you asked me to scoot over and give you a little more space, and I told you that you had plenty of space above your head and continued to stretch out and take the whole bench. It’s a crap argument to attempt to logically justify something that isn’t logically justified - in the case of the single-spacers, their esthetic preference that they’re trying (and largely succeeding) in forcing on others. > [@Saltire](#): > > The recently-done study did nothing to settle this question. They used a monospaced typewriter font. People’s heads had to be clamped in place, which did not simulate how people read very well. And the slight improvement in reading average reading speed masked what was really going on. > > They had each subject type a passage before the test, and noted who typed with single and who typed with double spaces. It turned out that only the double-spacers read text with double spaces faster. The single spacers read with the same speed regardless of the spacing. > > So it isn’t that double-spacing makes text more readable. It is that typists who double-space can’t read as well. Or alternatively, that single-spacers are too dim to recognize a reading aid when they see it. There are options! ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/153 "2018-05-11T18:45:00Z")
Thanks for the lengthy response but I’m still having to infer a reason for your using the extra space. I think you believe it adds to readability in some way. If so, then why do 99.99999999% of all professionally published communicators, to whom readability is a prime consideration, \*not \*use extra spaces? Why have professionals knowingly and thinking \*reduced \*spacing over time, starting long before computer typesetting and the internet? Where are you getting the notion that “the people in question didn’t like whitespace” rather than because professional communicators thought it actively \*hurt \*readability? If you think it’s an aesthetic choice for you, you’re entitled to want it in your products. I’m still trying to understand how the 99.99999999% of professional communicators in the world can all be wrong on a subject so central to their work. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/154 "2018-05-11T19:02:51Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Thanks for the lengthy response but I’m still having to infer a reason for your using the extra space. I think you believe it adds to readability in some way. I do indeed believe that it adds to readability in a small way. I also believe it just looks better - single-spaced stuff tends to visually resemble gigantic run-on sentences and walls of text. I freely concede though that my tastes in this matter are probably colored by the fact that I was explicitly taught to use two spaces, because duh, it’s the end of the sentence, there’s supposed to be a longer pause there. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > If so, then why do 99.99999999% of all professionally published communicators, to whom readability is a prime consideration, \*not \*use extra spaces? Why have professionals knowingly and thinking \*reduced \*spacing over time, starting long before computer typesetting and the internet? Where are you getting the notion that “the people in question didn’t like whitespace” rather than because professional communicators thought it actively \*hurt \*readability? > > If you think it’s an aesthetic choice for you, you’re entitled to want it in your products. I’m still trying to understand how the 99.99999999% of professional communicators in the world can all be wrong on a subject so central to their work. Of that 99.99999999%, I suspect that 99.99990000 of them do it because they don’t feel they have a choice. They’re told to do it, either directly by their boss, or by their style manual. (This includes people who were told to do it by their teachers and thus were never corrected by a boss or style manual.) And of course there are the people who do it because if they do it right HTML will mess it up and remove the spaces anyway, so why fight fate. Of the 00.00009999 percent of them that don’t feel at all constrained by the perceived standards of their profession or by the crushing weight of programmatic inevitability, I presume they do it because they have awful taste and/or are insane. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/155 "2018-05-11T19:16:06Z")
Coincidentally, just yesterday evening my wife and I (both late 50s) were sitting in the living room reading, and she commented that her current book used single spacing, and she found that irritating. So, did she say that because she was accustomed to double spacing, or because she preferred it for some reason or another? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/156 "2018-05-11T19:40:50Z")
> [@begbert2](#): > > Of that 99.99999999%, I suspect that 99.99990000 of them do it because they don’t feel they have a choice. They’re told to do it, either directly by their boss, or by their style manual. (This includes people who were told to do it by their teachers and thus were never corrected by a boss or style manual.) And of course there are the people who do it because if they do it right HTML will mess it up and remove the spaces anyway, so why fight fate. You might have a case if this started with browser stripping. But it started before either of us was born, and has nothing to do with computers, and would have needed an unlikely conspiracy of all the bosses in the world in all fields over decades, which even for conspiracy theories is a bit excessive. > [@](#): > > Of the 00.00009999 percent of them that don’t feel at all constrained by the perceived standards of their profession or by the crushing weight of programmatic inevitability, I presume they do it because they have awful taste and/or are insane. This is only fair since it’s exactly the way we feel about you. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/157 "2018-05-11T20:38:22Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > \ > > “Were”, surely? “Surely”? Since this entire thread is a nitpick (or a series of them), I will nitpick this issue with you, sir. I mock your can of worms, and heap scorn upon it! I throw down my glove and challenge you, sir! This is an example of an unreal non-past conditional (“was” is not a past tense, and instead denotes a non-past hypothetical). It’s generally considered that the “were” subjunctive form is preferable in such hypotheticals, but among non-pedants it’s frequently considered optional in a construct like this where the “would” in the subordinate clause already clearly denotes the hypothetical. It would be a bit pedantic to consider it unambiguously “wrong”, and it’s certainly not confusing and idiotic like some of the things I previously complained about. The non-subjunctive form is only “wrong”, IMHO, in common expressions like “if I were you” that are essentially idiomatic. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > If so, then why do 99.99999999% of all professionally published communicators, to whom readability is a prime consideration, \*not \*use extra spaces? Why have professionals knowingly and thinking \*reduced \*spacing over time, starting long before computer typesetting and the internet? Maybe because whatever subtle difference in readability there may be is not the _ **only** _ consideration of typesetters and publishers. Why, for instance, back in the days of typewritten manuscripts, did (at least some) publishers insist that the manuscript have the lines double spaced, presumably for the convenience of their typesetters, and then squish everything together in a dense mass of type in the final printed document? The extra space no doubt helped with proofreading annotations back in those primitive days, but did it not also help the typesetters scan the lines of text more easily? It seems that typesetting was and still is devoted to a certain principle of economy of space; single-spacing between sentences, minimal spacing between lines, single line spacing between paragraphs. I would posit that it looks “professional” to our eye because that’s the common typesetting tradition, but that it has a utilitarian basis. The British, similarly, adopted the convention of single quotes as the primary quotation symbol, ostensibly because it not only saved space but also saved ink. That doesn’t mean it’s “better”, and in fact personally I find it a bit annoying. And don’t get me started on the current fashion for non-justified (ragged right) typesetting. I think it looks like crap, like someone forgot to do the final pass through the formatting software. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/158 "2018-05-11T20:40:32Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > You might have a case if this started with browser stripping. But it started before either of us was born, and has nothing to do with computers, and would have needed an unlikely conspiracy of all the bosses in the world in all fields over decades, which even for conspiracy theories is a bit excessive. Oh no, it’s quite clear that historically speaking this was all started by deviant weirdos who hated spaces for no obvious or clearly stated reason. (Seriously - they started from the premise that extra space is unnecessary, and then produced a bullshit argument about there being inherent space in punctuation as a poor follow-up justification.) This school of thought, that whitespaces is evil, continued to float around for a while, but it was not universal - as evinced by various people (including me) reporting that they were actively taught to use two spaces after a sentence. The introduction of HTML, though, made an entire medium where this crappy single-space stuff was essentially enforced. It’s unclear to me whether removing double-spaces was a deliberately designed _intent_ of the original HTML spec - knowing what I do about programming and parsing it seems probable that they just wiped out whitespace in general because in ascii the whitespace situation is a bit dodgier and they felt preserving the double-spaces wasn’t worth the bother since they needed to dynamically reshuffle line breaks while supporting other formatting tags. (Example: if the sentence ends the line it likely will have no spaces after it - just a carriage return, a linefeed, and the start of the following line. If the word wrap changes where the lines end, what do you put in there then? Do you get all fancy and try to _infer_ sentence ends, or just announce that you’re eating all whitespace and that’s that?) So, you had a rapidly growing medium where, probably unintentionally, the single-spaced preference was essentially enforced. This bolstered the confidence of the single-spacers - their way was now THE way. Gradually the erroneous belief that double-spacing was never acceptable became prevalent. It’s still erroneous though. Single-spacing being inflicted online is quite likely a _design error_. As in, literally. > [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > This is only fair since it’s exactly the way we feel about you. 😃 But ask yourself, _why_ do you think that? Because you think whitespace is evil, or because you were _told_ whitespace is evil? Or was it because you _assumed_ it must be evil because the internet wipes it out and that _must_ have been intentional? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Cabbage\_Man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/82dd89/32.png) [@The\_Cabbage\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Cabbage_Man)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/159 "2018-05-11T20:52:28Z")
Since begbert2 mentions “blink”, please be aware that some people can have difficulty reading, or get headaches (or worse) from exotic tags like “blink”. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2018, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835/160 "2018-05-11T21:01:30Z")
> [@The\_Cabbage\_Man](#): > > Since begbert2 mentions “blink”, please be aware that some people can have difficulty reading, or get headaches (or worse) from exotic tags like “blink”. Also I’m not sure it’s even supported anymore in modern browsers. I specifically included it _because_ it’s a probably dead thing that everybody hates. Computer guy humor. 😛 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-you-a-single-or-two-spacer/813835.md?page=9)