# What's Up With People Still Double-Spacing After a Period **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 12, 2009, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858 "2009-04-12T17:19:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![hobscrk777](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a6a055/32.png) [@hobscrk777](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hobscrk777)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/21 "2009-04-12T18:57:37Z")
> [@appleciders](#): > > Yep, I’m 21 and I learned to do that in elementary school. It just looks cleaner in my mind, though I likely won’t notice if someone else doesn’t do it. Consistency is more important that anything else here, I suspect. Wow. We’re the same age and we seem to have contrasting viewpoints here. I can’t remember whether or not I was explicitly taught to double space after a period in elementary school. If I were, then at some point along the road I seem to have come to prefer single-spacing after periods. ---
**Author:** ![chappachula](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/d2c977/32.png) [@chappachula](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chappachula)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/22 "2009-04-12T19:07:50Z")
> [@Juliefoolie](#): > > Besides learning to double space, and centre , I had a teacher who made us learn chapter and verse the style of _Scholarly Reporting_ > I still have my copy I had to buy in Grade 13. > [@](#): > > (T- space, space-space, I-space, space-space, T-space, space-space, L-space, space, space E) > …T I T L E (slight hijack) does anybody else remember learning to type the “inverted triangle” on the title page? Something like: …This research paper is submitted in partial …fullfillment of the requirements … for course number xxx …December 1971 (Gosh…I had to add all those damn dots in each line, because without ‘em, the software moved everthing to the left margin. Where’s my good ol’ Smith-Corona manual? I sure miss hearing that nice ding at the end of each line.) ---
**Author:** ![manila](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@manila](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manila)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/23 "2009-04-12T19:12:50Z")
well here was one exercise I was taught. punctuate the following sentence to make sense No worry no worry worry worry worry damn I don’t know how to put in spoilers so I will have to come back and make another post ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/24 "2009-04-12T19:17:33Z")
> [@hobscrk777](#): > > Exactly! That’s what I’m after, here. I’ll brush it off for people who learned to type on typewriters, or learned to type on word processors in the very early days of word processing, when it was probably still appropriate to double space after periods. But for young people to do this?? The horror! The horror! Stranger ---
**Author:** ![ed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c77e96/32.png) [@ed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ed)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/25 "2009-04-12T19:58:40Z")
It’s not “the board” that removes those extra spaces. It’s your browser, actually. HTML condenses whitespace down to a single space, by design. Just about everything you read in your browser uses single spaces as a result. In order to fake a double space, you’d need to put in a pair of HTML non-breaking spaces after each period, which is a big pain. I’ve seen some die-hard sites that bother to do that, but not many… ---
**Author:** ![Mona\_Lisa\_Simpson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ce7236/32.png) [@Mona\_Lisa\_Simpson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mona_Lisa_Simpson)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/26 "2009-04-12T20:07:40Z")
MLA sucked ass, compared to Scholarly Reporting in the Humanities SRitH was published in a courier-like font, was a saddle stitched paper bound booklet and I you could actually take a ruler and measure things like margins. My grade 13 history teacher was such a stickler I made a back-sheet template for my pages to make sure my margins were perfect. (And because Im posting in two threads about typing, I bought my computer in my first year of university. It made my life about 10,000 times easier. Oh, for a year we had a smith corona word processor. I loved some parts about it, but mostly I still had to type by hand my History papers, because word processors didn’t handle footnotes very well.) ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/27 "2009-04-12T20:12:03Z")
I do it, but it’s not just out of habit. It seems to make the sentences stand out on their own, and thus make a paragraph easier to read, more so than just a single period. I don’t understand the hate. It’s not like I’m typing something ENTIRELY IN CAPITAL LETTERS, or typing Indian-style by adding spaces before the punctuation mark ,with no space afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![MacSpon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@MacSpon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacSpon)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/28 "2009-04-12T20:18:39Z")
If you’re using fully-justified text, the double space should be avoided. If you’re using unjustified text, and especially if you’re using a monospaced font (but even if you’re not), then the double space is still a good idea. Personally, when I’m writing fiction, I use a plain text editor (simply a matter of the way I’m comfortable working), and I double-space. When the story is finished, it gets converted to HTML, and – as **ed** points out – any double spacing will be swallowed up by your web browser. (One of the HTML rules is that multiple spaces are always reduced to a single space.) ---
**Author:** ![MacSpon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@MacSpon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacSpon)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/29 "2009-04-12T20:19:43Z")
> [@elmwood](#): > > I do it, but it’s not just out of habit. It seems to make the sentences stand out on their own, and thus make a paragraph easier to read, more so than just a single period. Well said. ---
**Author:** ![SanibelMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/30 "2009-04-12T20:33:12Z")
I was taught the double-space method in 1994 in a computer lab full of Macs. I’ve gotten over it, but it’s only fallen out of favor in the last decade or so and it will take longer than that for it to shake out from all the teachers and the students who have already learned it. ---
**Author:** ![hobscrk777](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a6a055/32.png) [@hobscrk777](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hobscrk777)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/31 "2009-04-12T20:50:37Z")
> [@elmwood](#): > > I do it, but it’s not just out of habit. It seems to make the sentences stand out on their own, and thus make a paragraph easier to read, more so than just a single period. > > I don’t understand the hate. It’s not like I’m typing something ENTIRELY IN CAPITAL LETTERS, or typing Indian-style by adding spaces before the punctuation mark ,with no space afterwards. No hate, just perplexity. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/32 "2009-04-12T20:52:51Z")
Grammar Hitler Mrs. Gage made absolutely sure I would never be able to deviate from this practice. Back in the old days when editing websites was still new, some of the editing programs wouldn’t let you do two spaces in a row (it’d just ignore them)… anal ol’ me had to go in and manually change every second space to   just to make sure it’d show up. Gah. And then, years later, when I was forced to write by hand again in college (I had almost forgotten how by this point) I’d have to manually leave a longer space after each sentence because it’d look wrong otherwise. This was on paper! (I’m 24, started typing when 8 or so) ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/33 "2009-04-12T20:58:58Z")
It’s how I learned to type in high school and I will continue to do it. It’s a habit with me and one space at the end of a sentence looks wrong to me. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/34 "2009-04-12T20:59:17Z")
I’m 30, we got our first computer when I was about 5 or 6, so I’ve been typing on computers for pretty much my whole life. We had a typewriter when I was very young and I found it delightful, but I didn’t really ever _work_ on one. Anyway, I do it. My dad taught me to when I was a little kid. Just a habit. I don’t notice whether or not someone double spaces or not, so it seems like a bizarre peeve. ---
**Author:** ![runcible\_spoon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/9fc29f/32.png) [@runcible\_spoon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/runcible_spoon)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/35 "2009-04-12T20:59:19Z")
I don’t recall if we learned this in middle school (when I first started typing up papers) but I know in my freshman typing class in high school, in 1999, I learned to do double-space. I still do it out of habit, and I’ve yet to be convinced that it makes things harder to read. I’ve tried out doing a replace-all in Word, and it seems to me that it’s a little bit easier to parse with extra spaces. Not that it’s a big deal - obviously, I can read things online without any trouble - but I don’t think it’s objectively better to single-space. I still capitalize and punctuate my IMs, too. ---
**Author:** ![manila](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@manila](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manila)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/36 "2009-04-12T21:01:28Z")
> [@manila](#): > > well here was one exercise I was taught. > > punctuate the following sentence to make sense > > No worry no worry worry worry worry > > damn I don’t know how to put in spoilers so I will have to come back and make another post Dammit I hate when I have to supply the punchlines to my own jokes :mad: but here we go (period) No worry (period) no worry ( No period) worry worry worry okay I’ll get my coat.. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/37 "2009-04-12T21:03:01Z")
> [@manila](#): > > Dammit I hate when I have to supply the punchlines to my own jokes :mad: > but here we go > > (period) No worry (period) no worry ( No period) worry worry worry > > okay I’ll get my coat.. 😃 Hah! ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/38 "2009-04-12T21:13:17Z")
I grew up with typewriters, not keyboards, and learned to double space after periods. I still do so, even though it’s edited out online. I think that even with the newer fonts, sentences look better and are easier to read with a double space after a period. However, the new standards are different, so I’m trying to just live with it. It’s not a big deal. I did somewhat alter my typing habits when I was playing Zork and similar games. For those who don’t know, text games would allow the user to enter several commands at once, separated by periods. No space was needed after periods. So when I’m confronted with a black screen and white text, I’m likely to enter: ```auto n.w.take weed.e.e.take shillelagh.w.s.take lamp.w.w.take all.w.open door.d. ``` ---
**Author:** ![Mudz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/97f17d/32.png) [@Mudz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mudz)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/39 "2009-04-12T21:29:19Z")
I didn’t know it had changed. I learned to type in a 1990 high school typing class. I think one space after a period looks weird. Two spaces = Gestalt. ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2009, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858/40 "2009-04-12T21:32:32Z")
As others have said: I was taught to do it. In my old age it isn’t important enough to me to try and break the habit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-up-with-people-still-double-spacing-after-a-period/492858.md?page=3)