Change Can Be Painful
"The double space after period has been drilled into me so strongly that I don’t know if I can ever break the habit.”
— Tina
“I can’t get used to single spaces after periods. Even in proportional-spaced type it looks crowded to me.”
— Ted
Exceptions to Every Rule
“Items (term papers, E-Mails, reports, book manuscripts, magazine articles, business proposals, etc.,) printed in monospaced characters require two spaces and have a lot of other stylistic rules designed to enhance readability. Proportional spaced characters don’t benefit from most of those rules.”
— Mars_red
“To my mind, a million books and magazines single spaced also qualify as a resource. I once heard an instructor arguing for two spaces in typeset text, completely oblivious to the single-spaced mountain of material that he reads every day. When this was pointed out to him, he quietly dropped his argument. He’d for years been blind to the type that he actually reads.”
— John McWade
The Bottomline: Professional typesetters, designers, and desktop publishers should use one space only. Save the double spaces for typewriting, email, term papers, or personal correspondence. For everyone else, do whatever makes you feel good.
