One or Two Spaces after Periods?
Mar. 9th, 2014 03:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI recently came across the Slate article, "Two Spaces After a Period: Why You Should Never, Ever Do It". Since I am one of those people who still uses two spaces, I decided to try to be open minded and read it.
(Note: For this blog entry the point is moot: any number of spaces after a period gets truncated into one space unless I use special html coding.)
Basically, three reasons were given:
* because I said so
* because two spaces is an eyesore
* because it is more work to type that extra space
Because I said so
Not just the author, to be fair. "Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule."
The author tried to explain that I was taught to add two spaces after a period because I learned my keyboarding skills on a typewriter and old-timey typewriters had monospaced fonts. "Monospaced type gives you text that looks "loose" and uneven; there's a lot of white space between characters and words, so it's more difficult to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule." Um, but periods are the skinniest character there is, so there is automatically almost an extra half space after it. Plus, wouldn't it also make it harder to spot spaces between words? I really cannot go for this explanation.
Eyesore
Let me just say that the eyesore defense did not help me keep an open mind since I find it to be the lowest form of defense.
I couldn't even figure out why it was an eyesore at first. For a very long time, a single space after a period looked wrong to me, one might even say ugly. Thankfully, nowadays I don't even notice anymore.
Finally, I figured it out, though (from an article I read later)--bigger spaces means you're more likely to end up in a situation where the spaces themselves make distracting patterns. Like when you're reading a newspaper with really narrow columns that are right- and left-justified. Okay, that makes a tiny amount of sense. (Thank goodness they are not against any spacing at all so we can have even less of an eyesore.)
More work
more work 2 capitlz & spell, 2
Changing traditions
So I checked out wikipedia. It says that spacing was not standardized until the 18th century when typesetters got together. At that time, double or almost double spacing was used in most countries, though "French spacing" or single spacing was used in some areas.
With typewriters, you only had a choice of one or two spaces, and two spaces was closer to the main standard. Actually, they started with three, then moved to two.
Nowadays many people still think you should use two spaces when using monospaced fonts, and one space otherwise.
Also, studies show that no one style is more readable than another.
So, it's like I learned from the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, sometimes things just change over time. What you knew in the past is no longer true today.
So I can keep using two spaces, knowing that in places where that is discernible, it will mark me as an old-timer.
Cost Reduction
Then I found a rebuttal to the Slate article, "Why two spaces after a period isn't wrong (or, the lies typographers tell about history)".
The author said it's not exactly known what caused the change but there are two theories. One is that reducing the size of the space reduces the amount of paper needed. "Less whitespace means less paper, which means fewer pages, which means reduced costs. Margins became smaller around this time, and standard interword spaces often went from about 1/3 em to 1/4 em."
This is the reason journalists don't use the Oxford comma. (Heh, because there wasn't enough controversy in this post already!)
The other theory is that a uniform space requires less expertise to set. "Operators could punch in the letters very quickly, and worrying about different width spaces required time and training to pay closer attention to syntax. Furthermore, when a line needed to be expanded or compressed, it was easier to simply expand or reduce all spaces in a line, rather than to deal with the aesthetics of how to handle the various width spaces (which had complex rules that can be found in many of the manuals cited above)."
Two spaces were also a problem with automatic line breaks--they could occur between the two spaces, leaving a space at the beginning of the next line.
The author also says, "you’ll hear some advocates for single-spacing talking about how modern fonts can take into account the extra spacing needed to the period in the font itself. But this is also an elaborate lie. Such kerning after periods would require sensitivity to abbreviations versus ends of sentences, something no font can do by itself. (Some publishing software and word processors do try.)"
The author concludes, "I just have to say to typographers: you’ve been had. The publishers wanted to make you cost less and be less relevant, and you fell into that trap. And now you want to go around and kick everyone until they conform to your simplistic, lazy standard? Wow. Just wow."
Conclusion
In conclusion, if I end up in a situation where someone is going apoplectic over my extra space or where a single space is required (such as in Robin's InDesign class, taught by a typesetter), then I will try to make the change (meanwhile doing a lot of search-and-replaces for when I mess up). Or maybe if I'm in danger of getting carpel-tunnel syndrome and want to minimize my typing. Otherwise, I don't mind looking like an old-timer.
(Note: For this blog entry the point is moot: any number of spaces after a period gets truncated into one space unless I use special html coding.)
Basically, three reasons were given:
* because I said so
* because two spaces is an eyesore
* because it is more work to type that extra space
Because I said so
Not just the author, to be fair. "Every modern typographer agrees on the one-space rule."
The author tried to explain that I was taught to add two spaces after a period because I learned my keyboarding skills on a typewriter and old-timey typewriters had monospaced fonts. "Monospaced type gives you text that looks "loose" and uneven; there's a lot of white space between characters and words, so it's more difficult to spot the spaces between sentences immediately. Hence the adoption of the two-space rule." Um, but periods are the skinniest character there is, so there is automatically almost an extra half space after it. Plus, wouldn't it also make it harder to spot spaces between words? I really cannot go for this explanation.
Eyesore
Let me just say that the eyesore defense did not help me keep an open mind since I find it to be the lowest form of defense.
I couldn't even figure out why it was an eyesore at first. For a very long time, a single space after a period looked wrong to me, one might even say ugly. Thankfully, nowadays I don't even notice anymore.
Finally, I figured it out, though (from an article I read later)--bigger spaces means you're more likely to end up in a situation where the spaces themselves make distracting patterns. Like when you're reading a newspaper with really narrow columns that are right- and left-justified. Okay, that makes a tiny amount of sense. (Thank goodness they are not against any spacing at all so we can have even less of an eyesore.)
More work
more work 2 capitlz & spell, 2
Changing traditions
So I checked out wikipedia. It says that spacing was not standardized until the 18th century when typesetters got together. At that time, double or almost double spacing was used in most countries, though "French spacing" or single spacing was used in some areas.
With typewriters, you only had a choice of one or two spaces, and two spaces was closer to the main standard. Actually, they started with three, then moved to two.
Nowadays many people still think you should use two spaces when using monospaced fonts, and one space otherwise.
Also, studies show that no one style is more readable than another.
So, it's like I learned from the book Eats, Shoots and Leaves, sometimes things just change over time. What you knew in the past is no longer true today.
So I can keep using two spaces, knowing that in places where that is discernible, it will mark me as an old-timer.
Cost Reduction
Then I found a rebuttal to the Slate article, "Why two spaces after a period isn't wrong (or, the lies typographers tell about history)".
The author said it's not exactly known what caused the change but there are two theories. One is that reducing the size of the space reduces the amount of paper needed. "Less whitespace means less paper, which means fewer pages, which means reduced costs. Margins became smaller around this time, and standard interword spaces often went from about 1/3 em to 1/4 em."
This is the reason journalists don't use the Oxford comma. (Heh, because there wasn't enough controversy in this post already!)
The other theory is that a uniform space requires less expertise to set. "Operators could punch in the letters very quickly, and worrying about different width spaces required time and training to pay closer attention to syntax. Furthermore, when a line needed to be expanded or compressed, it was easier to simply expand or reduce all spaces in a line, rather than to deal with the aesthetics of how to handle the various width spaces (which had complex rules that can be found in many of the manuals cited above)."
Two spaces were also a problem with automatic line breaks--they could occur between the two spaces, leaving a space at the beginning of the next line.
The author also says, "you’ll hear some advocates for single-spacing talking about how modern fonts can take into account the extra spacing needed to the period in the font itself. But this is also an elaborate lie. Such kerning after periods would require sensitivity to abbreviations versus ends of sentences, something no font can do by itself. (Some publishing software and word processors do try.)"
The author concludes, "I just have to say to typographers: you’ve been had. The publishers wanted to make you cost less and be less relevant, and you fell into that trap. And now you want to go around and kick everyone until they conform to your simplistic, lazy standard? Wow. Just wow."
Conclusion
In conclusion, if I end up in a situation where someone is going apoplectic over my extra space or where a single space is required (such as in Robin's InDesign class, taught by a typesetter), then I will try to make the change (meanwhile doing a lot of search-and-replaces for when I mess up). Or maybe if I'm in danger of getting carpel-tunnel syndrome and want to minimize my typing. Otherwise, I don't mind looking like an old-timer.
no subject
on 2014-03-10 03:07 am (UTC)--Texpenguin
no subject
on 2014-03-10 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2014-03-10 11:58 pm (UTC)Still, I'm thinking of joining the modern world anyway. Step 1: remember that I've decided to try adding only one space after my periods.