one space or two?

Working on a collaborative writing project for class, one of my teammates called me out (in a friendly way) on using two spaces after each sentence. I'm not that old, but I first learned how to type on Bank Street Writer (produced by the same people who brought us the Voyage of the Mimi) and AppleWorks (screenshot of the old Apple II version) in the computer labs at school and then WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS on my first PC. (Remember to hit F10 to save, then F7 to exit.) All dot matrix printer fonts and even early laser printer fonts back then looked like typewriter output. The computer was merely an enhanced typewriter where drafts could be saved and printed and hitting the Backspace key didn't involve the use of correcting ribbon. With typewriter (monospaced) fonts, each character had the same width. A letter "I" took up as much width as a letter "M", which both took up as much width as a space character. Two spaces after each sentence was completely necessary to give some sort of visual distinction between sentences.

Keep in mind what the printing process was before today's laser printers. Typewriters were used to write drafts and final manuscripts. The manuscripts would then be marked up for a typesetter (a person) to align lead type on a printing press for publication. The typesetter aligned the lead blocks knowing that two spaces on the manuscript was just for clarity in reading the manuscript, but would not show up in the final output on the printing press. Hence, if you look at any printed book, old or new, there is only one space between sentences.

Coming back to the computer age, ink jet and laser printers became prevalent, and the computers started to support proportional fonts. Microsoft Word (some primitive version I can't even remember) was the first WYSIWYG word processor I used that supported proportional fonts (Arial and Times New Roman). This meant that characters have varying widths—a letter "I" is much more narrow than a letter "M". The need for inserting two spaces after a sentence was gone as proportional fonts and laser printers replaced the typesetter and printing press (sort of, but not totally). Of course, it's near impossible to unlearn something, so I kept on tapping the space bar with my thumb twice after each sentence.

I read Robin Williams's book on computer typography (the graphic designer/author, not the comedian) a while ago and learned that only one space is necessary after a sentence when using proportional fonts like Times Roman and Arial. Only when using a typewriter-like monospace font like Courier does one need to insert two spaces after a sentence. The copyeditors at the Chicago Manual of Style agree. But I still haven't been able to break the habit. To complicate the matter, I write half of my documents in a word processor using proportional fonts (only one space necessary) and the other half in a text editor (e.g. commenting code) using monospaced fonts (two spaces are necessary).

Why should I keep all of this in my head though? Why doesn't the computer know how to handle this? When I write in this blog, or in any HTML document, the browser automatically ignores extra spaces. I can put two or three spaces after each sentence when I write this blog entry, but when you read it, you only see one space after the sentence. Microsoft Word really needs to do the same. It doesn't really matter too much if you use one space or two after a sentence in Word until multiple people start contributing to a document. Nothing looks worse than inconsistency. Imagine my teammate, looking through our 20 page document to check the end of every single sentence to make sure there is no more than one space after the period. So much for computers automating the tedious and mundane.

An aside: The quality of computer typography still has yet to catch up with the quality of traditional printing press typography. If you don't believe me, read some Edward Tufte or go to the Special Collections room at your local university library. Only one typesetting program on the computer comes close—TeX by Don Knuth. It's no WYSIWYG program. Rather, it involves writing a manuscript in a text file, marking it up (electronically), and then running it through the typesetting program. And yes, extra spaces after a period are automatically removed just like the old typesetter would.

A plea: Full justification in Microsoft Word makes the document unbearable to read with rivers of random spacing between words and sentences. Your reading audience will hate you. If you like your documents fully justified, you must turn Hyphenation (Tools → Hyphenation) on. Open any printed book or newspaper and you will see how they get their type fully justified. Words are broken at the end of a line at a convenient syllable and a hyphen is added to continue the word on the next line. This allows for tiny bits of spacing to be inserted between words instead of huge rivers of spaces. Yes, "rivers of spacing" is in fact the technical typesetting term.