How many spaces between sentences?

Mine is simply because no one else uses it. Entire systems have been designed to remove superfluous spacing.

Oddly, although I had keyboarding in 2000, I was taught to double-space. But I only did it in class. And, even then, it was often what slowed me down. I had never seen it done before, and never been told to use it. I didn’t even know such a convention existed.

I use two. I’m not going to change now. When I have tried to use one, it drags my speed way, way down. And anyway, it seems like anything important converts it to one if it’s that big a deal.

My mom sent me to secretarial school during the summer when I was about 14, her working theory was that I had a too horrible a personality to ever work retail or in food service, so I would need to get office jobs. I’m not THAT old, but I do have the office skill set of a 1950s secretary – I could probably get a job at Sterling Cooper and blend in just fine.

Here you have to use & #160; (without the space of course), and you can’t preview (or, if you do, you have to hit back before submitting.) I’ve had to work out some charts before.

Two spaces, but my computers change “.[Space][Space]” to “.[Space]” automagically for variable width font, and leave it for fixed. My iPhone and iPad both autocorrect “[Space][Space]” to “.[Space]” so I don’t have to “.123” button over to my symbols (on the iPhone, on the iPad, the “./?” button is on the main letters board, but it’s still easier to “[Space][Space]”).

I was taught to use two spaces, in the long ago year of 1998, and it’s a habit now.

I’m another TYPIST who voted two, and the score is tied at 74-all right now.

  1. It doesn’t actually make documents easier to read, and in fact trips me up with a wide gulf of blank space. Randy Seltzer’s post explains more.
  2. When number of characters is a concern, and a space is counted as a character, it’s a complete waste.
  3. It’s just not necessary.
  4. It’s analogous to insisting on punching in each individual digit of a phone number every time you dial it, because that’s the way you were taught and it’s just habit, rather than using available technology like speed dial and contact lists. It completely baffles me that folks insist on using outdated methods when better are readily available.

But like I said, while I feel passionately about it, I’m not going to fight anyone and demand they use one space. It’s mainly the stubbornly clinging to outdated habits that boggles me.

Only because you’re not used to it.

I find that while with proportional fonts, the space after a period is fairly obvious, with two spaces it’s really distinct. I use two, and for readability I don’t care except in the context where I’m really trying to cram some speed reading in (like before a class). The extra space really does help my brain sort out sentences when I’m flying through a page as quickly as I can.

ETA: Plus, I like rivers in books. Sometimes I think they spell something or make a little picture, and that it’d be a good way to encode information for spies :slight_smile:

One, which is correct usage in the way that two is not. I’d be interested in how professional writers & editors answered. Based on the comments, I’d guess 90+% of them picked 1.

Are you sure of that? With single and double space the implied meanings are respectively #2 and #1 of a typical dictionary.

Now you’ve got me interested. Which of the two meanings did you overlook? :smiley:

It would also be interesting to see US vs non-US usage. I had never heard about two spaces until I started using e-mail and hanging around in places like this.

Point of order… ‘proper’ typesetting software, such as the industry standard InDesign, puts those decisions in the hands of the typographer, not the whims of some geek at Microsoft. So when a writer supplies text to a designer with double spaces, we have to take them out. Software that makes these decisions for you is for amateurs, it’s not ‘better’.

The Non-US answer (or British, in this instance) is the same as for the rest of this thread. Two spaces is a typing convention from the days of mono-spaced alphabets on old-time typewriters, where two spaces improved clarity. It now is obsolete, but many older writers still do it out of habit, and then the designers/typesetters remove the extra space at layout stage.

Pick any published book off your shelf for proof.

I was taught two spaces in the early days of word processors (there were only typewriters when I was young-er, and I never used them), but have since been ridiculed for it to such an extent that I always only do one now.

So I voted one.

Two out of habit, but I’ve been training myself to use only one.

** shakes her head sadly at all the two-spacer old fogeys **

Dagnabbit, I use one now! Get off my lawn!

I guess this one is a matter of opinion, on which we will have to agree to disagree. I did read Randy’s post, but I still think for me it makes things easier to read/understand.

Fair enough, but I don’t think I have ever had to type a document where a space counts as a character.

Maybe, maybe not.

Heh - I do this, I often fund it is quicker than searching through the contact list!

Two. I can’t help myself. I worked with two guys who shared an office and one was a one-spacer and the other was a two-spacer. They used to drive each other crazy. Every time Two-spacer was typing something, he’d say to One-spacer, “Hear that?? <tap, tap> That’s me putting two spaces after a period. As it should be.”

Two spaces still seems to be standard in most legal drafting. Maybe it’s a hangover from the days when everyone wrote in Courier.

Our most common style guide addresses when to put one space vs. no space in an abbreviation, but I don’t think it takes a position on spaces at the end of a sentence.