I was apprenticed as a compositor in London in 1950. I was told by an old-timer that wide spacing was used by comps on 'piece-rate' to fill the page faster – so increasing the payment.
By the time I finished my apprenticeship close setting was the fashion. The standard word spacing was a mid space (1/4 of an em).
Thank you James for this insightful article. Robert Bringhurst, "The Elements of Typographic Style" (pg 28), [snip] "Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit." My studies also support single spacing when it comes to readability. The moves in sacatic (sp?) jumps with readbility impaired by rivers and blotch spaces at sentence stops.
I also find it interesting that The Chicago Manual for Style (the Bible for typewriter students for years) has changed its antiquated typewriter doctrine to typographical. But armed with all this typographic wisdom there are those (typewriter gurus) who state emphatically that us typographers are totally wrong and 2 spaces is RULE. They also set comma's outside quotes &c.
BTW, I designed, hand-cut & hand-digitized typefaces in late 70s for the old Rockwell Metro Typesetters aka MGD Systems development. Very tedious esp applying all the side bearings optically! I also designed fonts at Zipatone cutting rubylith masters. "Chic" was my only DTL claim to fame. Adobe offered it for a while in early 90s then 86d it.
James Felici--and CreativePro--have done a great service in this examination of one or two spaces after a period. Typesetting has been of major interest to me both professionally and as "art" for most of my 74 years. It deserves all the attention it can get in our world.
The column sent me to my 14th Edition Chicago Manual of Style. Though familiar with that valuable book and after lots of looking in the index and such, I could find nothing there about the one or two spaces question. Odd. The sections on manuscript style seem also silent or, better, opaque.
Many years in journalism lead me to think that a single space was preferable for the same reason some other rules exist in news style, to save space in the usually short lines of newspaper columns. The Associated Press and United Press International books of style were the usual authority in most publications. The Chicago Manual of Style--as I have been assured--is the most used reference in printing houses that offer everything from flyers to academic books and all in between.
Mr. Felici departs from that in only one style issue I could find. Chicago says there are no spaces before and after a one-em dash--or two hyphens to indicate that mark--for a parenthetical element. That advice is under Chicago's exploration of the Dash beginning at 5.105.
Seeing such a wealth of research, beautifully illustrated, must have made many CreativePro readers very happy today. A good way to start our new week and many thanks for that!
Submitted by HawaiiBill on Mon, 08/24/2009 - 14:51.
What a great post, Thanks. As a designer two spaces is wrong for everything I do, but this made me rethink things when using a monospace typeface, I probably won't do it still, but I will think about it when I don't. :)
Odd that this should come up at this time. It's been many years since I worried over double spaces at the end of sentences. I used to have a script in Quark, and before that Aldus Pagemaker that automatically stripped out double spaces. I had forgotten about the issue until this week. I am guiding two different organizations in development of their blog sites and in fact was stripping double spaces from some posts when this newsletter arrived.
Many years ago, I had lost my cushy job as a designer and was trying to make a go at freelance work. A friend got me an in with a major not-for-profit organization that needed an emergency rework. I staid up all night and long into the next day working on the piece. I had to take the proofs to some woman's house and sit with her yapping dogs while she studied the proofs.
"What happened to the space?" she cried out.
"What space?" I asked.
"The space between the sentences. Where did it go?"
Apparently I was tired and not my most gracious and tactful self when I educated her on proper typesetting. As I recall, I was sharing valuable information about how to make professional looking presentation. Something that any secretary that had to get type ready for a publication would want to know. This was not how it was perceived.
My friend called me the next.
"How could you talk to the president of the organization that way?"
I offered to waive my fee in an effort to make amends and gain future work. In the end, I didn't get paid, I didn't get anymore work, and someone went back and restored all of the precious double spaces after each sentence.
The examples you show of early typesetting are all justified alignment. To save time they used the sentence breaks to justify many of the lines vs. tediously adding word or letter spacing. Inter word or inter letter spacing to create justified text happens automatically today with fine controls available to adjust the final result. Two spaces does make sense with monospace fonts just as it did with the typewriter. With most modern fonts a period, a space and a sentence cap are more than enough visual delineation between sentences. Double spaces only take up more space than necessary, take more time to type and create gaps and rivers that interrupt the natural flow of the eye when reading (not to mention it's ugly). As we no longer generally use typewriters or even monospaced fonts routinely, they should teach keyboard skills sans the extra unneeded space. Nevertheless, I'll still run search and replace on all the text I receive just to make sure.
You mention double spacing or em spacing, but you fail to mention using en spacing at the end of a sentence. Some feel that an en gives the visual pause without the large space gap of an em or a double space.
I always use double spaces at the end of a sentence, and I wish everyone did. To me, the reason is obvious. The sentence breaks are easier to see, and it improves the readability of a document. This is especially true for people with aging eyes or marginal vision, for whom a tiny period is almost invisible.
The TEX typesetting invented by Prof. Donald Knuth in the 1980s and used widely for typesetting scientific and mathematical texts allows the space after punctuation to be precisely controlled. By default it inserts more space after the end of sentences.
Paul Howson, Queensland, Australia
Still a hot-button issue! I had no idea that coming down on the wrong side of it could threaten your livelihood.
First and foremost I confess to making a terrible typo in this column. The word space found in most text faces is equal to half an EN space, not half an em. The widths of characters in most digital fonts are expressed in thousandths of an em, and word spaces typically measure 250/1000 em. They may be somewhat narrower in faces with narrower characters, and wider in faces with wider characters.
That said, the width of word spaces has also varied over time. In the past, word spaces that were one third of an em wide have also been commonly used. The point of this column, though, hinged not on the thickness of the spaceband itself but on the relationship between the width of a word space and that of a sentence period space. The norm for that relationship has become one to one, with the same size space used in both places.
Clearly, not everyone agrees that today’s norm deserves its status, and there was a time not too long ago when their views held sway. Moreover, technically speaking, there is no penalty to pay for using two word spaces after a sentence period: Today’s word processors and page layout programs will not allow those spaces to be divided at a line ending, which would cause the turn line to start with a word space.
Ultimately, it’s a question of typographic style, not typographic dogma. But when you defy the norm, you risk looking, well, abnormal.
It's not clear to me that using two space characters after a period character looks better for a monospaced font than for a proportional font. In a monospaced font, the space glyph is the same width as the period glyph, both of which have lots of white space. The period plus single space combination results in a lot of white space between sentences. In a propotional font, both glyphs are quite narrow, leading to less visible white space.
When lines are set flush left, ragged right (which minimizes letterspacing variations caused by justification algorithms), it may be possible that some proportional fonts look better with two spaces, or one em space after the period than with just a single space(though I don't know of any examples).
The history is entertaining. The answer, however, is indisputable. If you are ever to send a document to a reputable publishing house, there is no argument. CMS states (not to mention AP, APA, and MLA styles, not quoted here):
"6.11 Space between sentences
In typeset matter, one space, not two (in other words, a regular word space), follows any mark of punctuation that ends a sentence, whether a period, a colon, a question mark, an exclamation point, or closing quotation marks."
Designers should not be concerning themselves with editing issues. That is the editor's purview, not the designer's. In fact, designers should never input text, performing only paste work from the editor's approved document. In most professional establishments, if a designer attempted to take on editing responsibilites, they would be fired. Stick to what you know. Leave the editing to the professionals.
Sorry, I should have clarified what those abbreviations meant (all referring to industry standards): CMS=Chicago Manual of Style; AP=Associated Press (journalism); APA=American Psychological Association (for psychological and behavioral health publishing); and MLA=Modern Language Association.
The Chicago Manual of Style is actually quite flexible, but the issue of spaces is very clear and affords no wriggle room (and yes, to whomever made reference to the CMS being silent on the issue is the 14th edition, it is very clear in that edition as well. One must know how to use the CMS to find the relevant information. Simply saying it doesn't speak about it because you can't find it is irresponsible at best).
I'll note only that the entire preceding article uses a single space throughout, except where it references a double-spaced example.
In my 25 years of professional typography, both manual and digital, a single space has been the convention, and double spaces are meticulously and thoroughly removed from text documents that contain them when styling type.
Even in the days of galleys and paste-up, good copy editors and proofreaders (sadly, a vanishing breed) steadfastly marked up the second space of a sentence-ending double space with the familiar red squiggle we know and love as "delete".
James, thanks for the informative look into the stylistic evolution of the printed word...
Just wanted to say I thought this was a great bit of info to read. I too believed the origins of the double-space came from the typewriter and always do a find and replace for them. Now I know when not to.
That looked like James Felici taking another whack at it in the "CMS makes it simple and clear" comment.
In there, he made it simple and clear that he is using the 15th Edition of the Chicago Manual of Style and his quote applies solely to typeset copy. We remain without the authority that CMS has and deserves on monotype that might still roll from some ink-stained wretch's old Royal or--perhaps--the printer spitting out good Courier.
He is very clearly off base, however, when he says that type is solely the editor's responsibility. As long as I've been in the business the designer of either books or less substantial matter such as advertising calls the shot on font to be used, justified or ragged-right and other matters. A designer might have very strong feelings about a type block that includes a sponsor's slogan or logo, for example, and that would be indicated in the copy. These days, increasingly, the designer not only decides how the work will look in its finished state but might also set the type and finish the page for printing with, for example, inDesign. Do it myself, as a matter of fact. As a professional editor, by the way, the designer in me is not offended by changes the current CMS suggests but would be unhappy with some of the older CMS settings such as wide spacing between sentences where they occur in the original 1906 Manual of Style. Things change.
Submitted by HawaiiBill on Wed, 09/02/2009 - 13:17.
Typography in a design sense is one thing. There is a difference between manipulating type and manipulating text. Spacing as defined by editing and writing style falls within the editor's purview, and involves manipulating actual text. Style falls within the designer's purview, and involves the appearance of the type on the page. Blurring the lines between these two is very risky business. Let's put it this way: if you need to use story editor to change something, you probably shouldn't be doing it.
Very interesting article. I recently was discussing this very subject with my non-graphic designer husband. He is currently taking classes in a MBA program, where his professor was teaching them some best practices for business page layout. The professor recommends using 2 spaces after a period in business writing becuase it is more formal and the "norm" in the business arena.
Ironically, this suggestion came from the professor who wrote their textbook, which was professionally typeset, and of course only used one space after the periods throughout the book.
Thanks to your article, i guess I should now forgive my business-oriented clients for sending me emails and copywriting with the "ugly" extra space after their periods.
The reason I was told that double spacing was discouraged because of saving memory/space that was used in early computer days, to memory comes the figure 32 bit/byte(?), not quite sure of that, but that was reserved for every letter used, so computer memory space saving being of the premium in the early days, the double space took up 64 bit/byte of memory, so to retrieve that memory space double spacing was discouraged, and that was the only reason.
I hate to read a large block of text which runs on and on with no gaps for the eyes to rest for just a moment, and the double spacing does give a break for digesting what was said in the previous matter, before reading on to digest the following text, whilst non-double spacing just encourages you to read on and on and on whether you fully understood or took in what you was reading fully, there is not a 'rest spot' for you to think of what you had just read. My opinion of course for over 50 years of typesetting, I bet you stopped briefly at the double spaced places to become more aware of the written text. One can talk of 'rivers' of text, one can also talk of boredom of blocked text, with no character. Errol Owen
Feel free to visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing, where I have placed the results of a bit more research on the subject. Hawaiibill, by the way, the CMoS quote above came from section six. If you look in section two of the 15th edition, (page 61), you can see a section as follows, that applies to more than "typeset matter."
Keyboarding: General Instructions
61 - A single character space, not two spaces, should be left after periods at the ends of sentences (both in manuscript and in final, published form) and after colons.
Anyway, I won't get into more details. I like this Website more than most of the other 70+ I have visited on the subject while researching. I hope the info on Wikipedia is also helpful for those interested.
I work on the writing/copyediting side, and have had occasion to discuss the one-space-or-two issue with clients. If I see the double space, I bring it up right at the start of the project and get the input of the designer and any key players. That avoids nasty situations like the one recounted above (ouch!) Once a decision has been made for or against, my job is to check for consistency. In the end, spacing is a design call.
This is the best article on the issue that I've found to date. I love the historical examples. Many thanks!
Using single spacing not only looks better (in digital design), it also saves on space and paper (taking less to say the same thing). AND it saves on the number of keystrokes needed. I'm happy I'm no longer on a typewriter. " )
Submitted by darcyryan on Mon, 09/20/2010 - 14:02.
While I would agree with monospacing for type-set material, in my work-environment of technical written and architectural CAD work many office still prefer dbl-spacing sentence-ending periods to differentiate them from the many abbreviated-term periods, "dot" outline-markers and decimal-placeholders used. Just as we typically abuse the "comma rules" all the time to preserve clarity of intent over typography and grammar rules.
"Double Space or Not? [ ]Well I guess you could not tell where my double-spaced parts were as they were taken/stripped/stolen away without my permission."
There. _...restored to what the author intended!
The worst aspect of the situation with sentence spacing is the automatic (and mostly irreversible) stripping away of elements of prose that authors clearly want included. _I am looking at you, html, and anyone trying to force his or her opinion on others.
Double space after a full point
I was apprenticed as a compositor in London in 1950. I was told by an old-timer that wide spacing was used by comps on 'piece-rate' to fill the page faster – so increasing the payment.
By the time I finished my apprenticeship close setting was the fashion. The standard word spacing was a mid space (1/4 of an em).
Thank you James for this
Thank you James for this insightful article. Robert Bringhurst, "The Elements of Typographic Style" (pg 28), [snip] "Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit." My studies also support single spacing when it comes to readability. The moves in sacatic (sp?) jumps with readbility impaired by rivers and blotch spaces at sentence stops.
I also find it interesting that The Chicago Manual for Style (the Bible for typewriter students for years) has changed its antiquated typewriter doctrine to typographical. But armed with all this typographic wisdom there are those (typewriter gurus) who state emphatically that us typographers are totally wrong and 2 spaces is RULE. They also set comma's outside quotes &c.
BTW, I designed, hand-cut & hand-digitized typefaces in late 70s for the old Rockwell Metro Typesetters aka MGD Systems development. Very tedious esp applying all the side bearings optically! I also designed fonts at Zipatone cutting rubylith masters. "Chic" was my only DTL claim to fame. Adobe offered it for a while in early 90s then 86d it.
Thanks again,
Gerald Moscato
Moscato Design
http://moscatodesign.blogspot.com/
Small question, great column!
James Felici--and CreativePro--have done a great service in this examination of one or two spaces after a period. Typesetting has been of major interest to me both professionally and as "art" for most of my 74 years. It deserves all the attention it can get in our world.
The column sent me to my 14th Edition Chicago Manual of Style. Though familiar with that valuable book and after lots of looking in the index and such, I could find nothing there about the one or two spaces question. Odd. The sections on manuscript style seem also silent or, better, opaque.
Many years in journalism lead me to think that a single space was preferable for the same reason some other rules exist in news style, to save space in the usually short lines of newspaper columns. The Associated Press and United Press International books of style were the usual authority in most publications. The Chicago Manual of Style--as I have been assured--is the most used reference in printing houses that offer everything from flyers to academic books and all in between.
Mr. Felici departs from that in only one style issue I could find. Chicago says there are no spaces before and after a one-em dash--or two hyphens to indicate that mark--for a parenthetical element. That advice is under Chicago's exploration of the Dash beginning at 5.105.
Seeing such a wealth of research, beautifully illustrated, must have made many CreativePro readers very happy today. A good way to start our new week and many thanks for that!
What a great post, Thanks.
What a great post, Thanks. As a designer two spaces is wrong for everything I do, but this made me rethink things when using a monospace typeface, I probably won't do it still, but I will think about it when I don't. :)
How Timely
Odd that this should come up at this time. It's been many years since I worried over double spaces at the end of sentences. I used to have a script in Quark, and before that Aldus Pagemaker that automatically stripped out double spaces. I had forgotten about the issue until this week. I am guiding two different organizations in development of their blog sites and in fact was stripping double spaces from some posts when this newsletter arrived.
Many years ago, I had lost my cushy job as a designer and was trying to make a go at freelance work. A friend got me an in with a major not-for-profit organization that needed an emergency rework. I staid up all night and long into the next day working on the piece. I had to take the proofs to some woman's house and sit with her yapping dogs while she studied the proofs.
"What happened to the space?" she cried out.
"What space?" I asked.
"The space between the sentences. Where did it go?"
Apparently I was tired and not my most gracious and tactful self when I educated her on proper typesetting. As I recall, I was sharing valuable information about how to make professional looking presentation. Something that any secretary that had to get type ready for a publication would want to know. This was not how it was perceived.
My friend called me the next.
"How could you talk to the president of the organization that way?"
I offered to waive my fee in an effort to make amends and gain future work. In the end, I didn't get paid, I didn't get anymore work, and someone went back and restored all of the precious double spaces after each sentence.
Double spaces still bring up painful memories.
There's no real debate.
The examples you show of early typesetting are all justified alignment. To save time they used the sentence breaks to justify many of the lines vs. tediously adding word or letter spacing. Inter word or inter letter spacing to create justified text happens automatically today with fine controls available to adjust the final result. Two spaces does make sense with monospace fonts just as it did with the typewriter. With most modern fonts a period, a space and a sentence cap are more than enough visual delineation between sentences. Double spaces only take up more space than necessary, take more time to type and create gaps and rivers that interrupt the natural flow of the eye when reading (not to mention it's ugly). As we no longer generally use typewriters or even monospaced fonts routinely, they should teach keyboard skills sans the extra unneeded space. Nevertheless, I'll still run search and replace on all the text I receive just to make sure.
Double Spacing or Not
You mention double spacing or em spacing, but you fail to mention using en spacing at the end of a sentence. Some feel that an en gives the visual pause without the large space gap of an em or a double space.
What about readability?
I always use double spaces at the end of a sentence, and I wish everyone did. To me, the reason is obvious. The sentence breaks are easier to see, and it improves the readability of a document. This is especially true for people with aging eyes or marginal vision, for whom a tiny period is almost invisible.
Space after sentences in TEX
The TEX typesetting invented by Prof. Donald Knuth in the 1980s and used widely for typesetting scientific and mathematical texts allows the space after punctuation to be precisely controlled. By default it inserts more space after the end of sentences.
Paul Howson, Queensland, Australia
Felici's Comments and a Correction
Still a hot-button issue! I had no idea that coming down on the wrong side of it could threaten your livelihood.
First and foremost I confess to making a terrible typo in this column. The word space found in most text faces is equal to half an EN space, not half an em. The widths of characters in most digital fonts are expressed in thousandths of an em, and word spaces typically measure 250/1000 em. They may be somewhat narrower in faces with narrower characters, and wider in faces with wider characters.
That said, the width of word spaces has also varied over time. In the past, word spaces that were one third of an em wide have also been commonly used. The point of this column, though, hinged not on the thickness of the spaceband itself but on the relationship between the width of a word space and that of a sentence period space. The norm for that relationship has become one to one, with the same size space used in both places.
Clearly, not everyone agrees that today’s norm deserves its status, and there was a time not too long ago when their views held sway. Moreover, technically speaking, there is no penalty to pay for using two word spaces after a sentence period: Today’s word processors and page layout programs will not allow those spaces to be divided at a line ending, which would cause the turn line to start with a word space.
Ultimately, it’s a question of typographic style, not typographic dogma. But when you defy the norm, you risk looking, well, abnormal.
Why use 2 spaces for monospace fonts?
It's not clear to me that using two space characters after a period character looks better for a monospaced font than for a proportional font. In a monospaced font, the space glyph is the same width as the period glyph, both of which have lots of white space. The period plus single space combination results in a lot of white space between sentences. In a propotional font, both glyphs are quite narrow, leading to less visible white space.
When lines are set flush left, ragged right (which minimizes letterspacing variations caused by justification algorithms), it may be possible that some proportional fonts look better with two spaces, or one em space after the period than with just a single space(though I don't know of any examples).
CMS makes it simple and clear
The history is entertaining. The answer, however, is indisputable. If you are ever to send a document to a reputable publishing house, there is no argument. CMS states (not to mention AP, APA, and MLA styles, not quoted here):
"6.11 Space between sentences
In typeset matter, one space, not two (in other words, a regular word space), follows any mark of punctuation that ends a sentence, whether a period, a colon, a question mark, an exclamation point, or closing quotation marks."
Designers should not be concerning themselves with editing issues. That is the editor's purview, not the designer's. In fact, designers should never input text, performing only paste work from the editor's approved document. In most professional establishments, if a designer attempted to take on editing responsibilites, they would be fired. Stick to what you know. Leave the editing to the professionals.
Sorry, I should have
Sorry, I should have clarified what those abbreviations meant (all referring to industry standards): CMS=Chicago Manual of Style; AP=Associated Press (journalism); APA=American Psychological Association (for psychological and behavioral health publishing); and MLA=Modern Language Association.
The Chicago Manual of Style is actually quite flexible, but the issue of spaces is very clear and affords no wriggle room (and yes, to whomever made reference to the CMS being silent on the issue is the 14th edition, it is very clear in that edition as well. One must know how to use the CMS to find the relevant information. Simply saying it doesn't speak about it because you can't find it is irresponsible at best).
Die, Double space!
I'll note only that the entire preceding article uses a single space throughout, except where it references a double-spaced example.
In my 25 years of professional typography, both manual and digital, a single space has been the convention, and double spaces are meticulously and thoroughly removed from text documents that contain them when styling type.
Even in the days of galleys and paste-up, good copy editors and proofreaders (sadly, a vanishing breed) steadfastly marked up the second space of a sentence-ending double space with the familiar red squiggle we know and love as "delete".
James, thanks for the informative look into the stylistic evolution of the printed word...
Yours truly,
TM
Great read
Just wanted to say I thought this was a great bit of info to read. I too believed the origins of the double-space came from the typewriter and always do a find and replace for them. Now I know when not to.
Actually, typography can be a designer's call
That looked like James Felici taking another whack at it in the "CMS makes it simple and clear" comment.
In there, he made it simple and clear that he is using the 15th Edition of the Chicago Manual of Style and his quote applies solely to typeset copy. We remain without the authority that CMS has and deserves on monotype that might still roll from some ink-stained wretch's old Royal or--perhaps--the printer spitting out good Courier.
He is very clearly off base, however, when he says that type is solely the editor's responsibility. As long as I've been in the business the designer of either books or less substantial matter such as advertising calls the shot on font to be used, justified or ragged-right and other matters. A designer might have very strong feelings about a type block that includes a sponsor's slogan or logo, for example, and that would be indicated in the copy. These days, increasingly, the designer not only decides how the work will look in its finished state but might also set the type and finish the page for printing with, for example, inDesign. Do it myself, as a matter of fact. As a professional editor, by the way, the designer in me is not offended by changes the current CMS suggests but would be unhappy with some of the older CMS settings such as wide spacing between sentences where they occur in the original 1906 Manual of Style. Things change.
Designers and type (vs. text)
Typography in a design sense is one thing. There is a difference between manipulating type and manipulating text. Spacing as defined by editing and writing style falls within the editor's purview, and involves manipulating actual text. Style falls within the designer's purview, and involves the appearance of the type on the page. Blurring the lines between these two is very risky business. Let's put it this way: if you need to use story editor to change something, you probably shouldn't be doing it.
Either way, OK.
Very interesting article. I recently was discussing this very subject with my non-graphic designer husband. He is currently taking classes in a MBA program, where his professor was teaching them some best practices for business page layout. The professor recommends using 2 spaces after a period in business writing becuase it is more formal and the "norm" in the business arena.
Ironically, this suggestion came from the professor who wrote their textbook, which was professionally typeset, and of course only used one space after the periods throughout the book.
Thanks to your article, i guess I should now forgive my business-oriented clients for sending me emails and copywriting with the "ugly" extra space after their periods.
Double Space or Not?
The reason I was told that double spacing was discouraged because of saving memory/space that was used in early computer days, to memory comes the figure 32 bit/byte(?), not quite sure of that, but that was reserved for every letter used, so computer memory space saving being of the premium in the early days, the double space took up 64 bit/byte of memory, so to retrieve that memory space double spacing was discouraged, and that was the only reason.
I hate to read a large block of text which runs on and on with no gaps for the eyes to rest for just a moment, and the double spacing does give a break for digesting what was said in the previous matter, before reading on to digest the following text, whilst non-double spacing just encourages you to read on and on and on whether you fully understood or took in what you was reading fully, there is not a 'rest spot' for you to think of what you had just read. My opinion of course for over 50 years of typesetting, I bet you stopped briefly at the double spaced places to become more aware of the written text. One can talk of 'rivers' of text, one can also talk of boredom of blocked text, with no character. Errol Owen
Double Space or Not?
Well I guess you could not tell where my double-spaced parts were as they were taken/stripped/stolen away without my permission.
More information available
Feel free to visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing, where I have placed the results of a bit more research on the subject. Hawaiibill, by the way, the CMoS quote above came from section six. If you look in section two of the 15th edition, (page 61), you can see a section as follows, that applies to more than "typeset matter."
Keyboarding: General Instructions
61 - A single character space, not two spaces, should be left after periods at the ends of sentences (both in manuscript and in final, published form) and after colons.
Anyway, I won't get into more details. I like this Website more than most of the other 70+ I have visited on the subject while researching. I hope the info on Wikipedia is also helpful for those interested.
Plinko
It's a design call
I work on the writing/copyediting side, and have had occasion to discuss the one-space-or-two issue with clients. If I see the double space, I bring it up right at the start of the project and get the input of the designer and any key players. That avoids nasty situations like the one recounted above (ouch!) Once a decision has been made for or against, my job is to check for consistency. In the end, spacing is a design call.
This is the best article on the issue that I've found to date. I love the historical examples. Many thanks!
Two more reasons for single space
Using single spacing not only looks better (in digital design), it also saves on space and paper (taking less to say the same thing). AND it saves on the number of keystrokes needed. I'm happy I'm no longer on a typewriter. " )
The second picture shows
The second picture shows that double space doesn't look all that weird with enlarged line height.
While I would agree with
While I would agree with monospacing for type-set material, in my work-environment of technical written and architectural CAD work many office still prefer dbl-spacing sentence-ending periods to differentiate them from the many abbreviated-term periods, "dot" outline-markers and decimal-placeholders used. Just as we typically abuse the "comma rules" all the time to preserve clarity of intent over typography and grammar rules.
very nice read
Bookmarked will be visting regularly. Really like your stuff mate.
Might Makes Right?
"Double Space or Not? [ ]Well I guess you could not tell where my double-spaced parts were as they were taken/stripped/stolen away without my permission."
There. _...restored to what the author intended!
The worst aspect of the situation with sentence spacing is the automatic (and mostly irreversible) stripping away of elements of prose that authors clearly want included. _I am looking at you, html, and anyone trying to force his or her opinion on others.