Some lessons on this website will involve discretionary choices. This one is mandatory.
You must always put exactly one space between sentences.
I understand that many people were taught early in life to double-space their sentences. I was too. But double-spacing is a habit held over from the typewriter age. It has never been part of standard typography. Because typewriter fonts were unusually proportioned, a double space helped set off sentences better. Today, since we don’t use typewriter fonts, double spaces aren’t necessary or desirable.
Let’s see that paragraph again, but with double spaces:
I understand that many people were taught early in life to double-space their sentences. I was too. But double-spacing is a habit held over from the typewriter age. It has never been part of standard typography. Because typewriter fonts were unusually proportioned, a double space helped set off sentences better. Today, since we don’t use typewriter fonts, double spaces aren’t necessary or desirable.
Do you see the problem? The extra spaces between sentences disrupt the overall balance of white space in the paragraph.
I understand that many people were taught early in life to double-space their sentences. I was too. But double-spacing is a habit held over from the typewriter age. It has never been part of standard typography. Because typewriter fonts were unusually proportioned, a double space helped set off sentences better. Today, since we don’t use typewriter fonts, double spaces aren’t necessary or desirable.
And one more time, in a typewriter font, the one case where double-spacing is tolerable:
I understand that many people were taught early in life to double-space their sentences. I was too. But double-spacing is a habit held over from the typewriter age. It has never been part of standard typography. Because typewriter fonts were unusually proportioned, a double space helped set off sentences better. Today, since we don’t use typewriter fonts, double spaces aren’t necessary or desirable.
This is a rule that many nonprofessional writers resist. I’m not clear why that is. But you don’t have to take my word for it—pick up any newspaper, book or magazine and tell me how many spaces there are between sentences.
Correct—one.
Thanks! I design websites, and I’m constantly eliminating the extra space between the sentences of the text that clients give me. It’s good to know I’m not crazy. (at least in this regard)
Unless you’ve got HTML nonbreaking spaces ( ) in your HTML or your text is in a >pre< element, you don’t need to trouble yourself removing extra whitespace. Any consecutive whitespace in HTML is a single white space. There are lots of special space characters in HTML. A lot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_(punctuation)#Table_of_spaces
This is true, unless, of course, the stylebook to which you are beholden requires you to insert two spaces between sentences. For example, the manual of style for the Connecticut appellate courts requires two spaces between sentences. Why? Beats me, but there it is.
OK, but there’s how many appellate cases in Connecticut a year? Five or six? The rest of the time, Connecticut lawyers can enjoy using one space.
I don’t know… the US Supreme Court rulings use two spaces after their sentences:
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/07slipopinion.html
I think they use LaTeX to typeset, which uses two spaces (or at least a space an a half) after each sentence by default.
I’ve gotten used to reading one-spaced text since that’s the default behavior of HTML (and hence everything you see on the Web), but I still see extra spaces in printed material.
As we know, government does not always adopt standards that are in tune with modern practice. The Seventh Circuit gets it right:
“Put only one space after punctuation. The typewriter convention of two spaces is for monospaced type only. When used with proportionally spaced type, extra spaces lead to what typographers call “rivers”—wide, meandering areas of white space up and down a page. Rivers interfere with the eyes’ movement from one word to the next.”
The vast majority of professionally typeset material follows this convention. I’m sure that there are counterexamples; that doesn’t contravene the existence of the rule.
(PS. Yes, I know there are three spaces in the “double spaced” paragraph above. Word spacing is much coarser on the screen than on the printed page, so I had to exaggerate the HTML to make the illustration realistic.)
In citation ridden and complex statutory interpretation, an obvious, albeit eye disrupting, break between sentences can be desirable.
I’d rather be clear about what legal arguments I’m expressing or reading, than avoid a little eye irritation.
I respectfully disagree.
I don’t disagree with the sources you cite. I simply think that double spacing between sentences makes text easier to read (including in the example you give above). This is particularly true because we use periods to abbreviate words and terms - Mr., Dr., L.L.C., Wn. App. (in Washington state), Ex., etc.
It’s true that double-spacing creates rivers and may even “disrupt the overall balance of white space in the paragraph” (though I think this is arguable). But single-spacing makes it far more likely that I’ll get tripped up about where a sentence starts when I’m reading quickly. Especially with abbreviations. Especially with abbreviations and lots of legal citations.
The key point to me is clarity, particularly clarity between thoughts. For example, I tend to put a fair number of commas in sentences even when they are not absolutely necessary. For example, I don’t like this: When you don’t know what you’re dealing with litigation can be overwhelming. I prefer this: When you don’t know what you’re dealing with, litigation can be overwhelming.
The principle with double-spacing is, to me, the same.
I may be wrong on this point, at least technically. I’m curious to learn more about the opposing point of view.
My background, FWIW, is that I studied magazine journalism in college and had various writing/editing/web design jobs prior to becoming a lawyer. Both my parents are creative writers, but not particularly focused on typography. I now run my own small civil litigation firm (www.raoandpierce.com), teach some CLE’s on letter writing, and do creative/non-creative writing as time permits.
Cheers,
Christopher
“The typewriter tradition of separating sentences with two word spaces after a period has no place in typesetting … replace [double word spaces] with single word spaces.” James Felici, The Complete Manual of Typography at 80-81.
“Use a single word space between sentences. … Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning [the] quaint Victorian habit” of double-spacing sentences. Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style at 28.
There will always be some tension between prescriptivism and descriptivism in a guide like this (i.e. whether rules can be objectively correct, or if everything is subjective.) When things are a matter of taste, I say so. But one space between sentences—that is a rule that typographic authorities agree on.
If, armed with the rule and the authority supporting it, you wish to do otherwise, feel free. As I said, “This is a rule that many nonprofessional writers resist. I’m not clear why that is.”
I do not doubt that experts agree. What I’m saying is that the result is a relative lack of clarity (just as most all keyboard manufacturers agree on a QWERTY keyboard - but it’s still not very efficient). What I’m curious about is whether typographers - including yourself - agree on single spacing just because they think it looks better or because they think it is at least equally clear to read.
After posting last night I thought some more about why I think double spaces increase clarity: If double spaces are used, then every time the reader sees a single space it can only be an abbreviation. But if single spaces are used, and, for example, you lose your place and have to find it again, you must differentiate between the single spaces between sentences and the single spaces after abbreviations. So even if it’s prettier, this can only make it harder to find your place. Right?
So my question is, what is your response to the substantive points I made above regarding relative lack of clarity? Do you disagree with me, or do you simply think that’s not the operative point? I ask again not to be argumentative (though it may appear that way), but because I (obviously) know absolutely nothing about typography - I just know what I like, and what I think supports understanding of the written word.
Cheers,
Christopher Rao
Typography is the visual component of the written word, and its purpose is to support the meaning of the text. The one-space-between-sentences rule exists because in standard text, the single space suffices to distinguish sentences. The end of one sentence is signified by punctuation; the beginning of the next by a capital letter. A second word space detracts more from a smooth reading experience than it adds in meaning. (The same reason it’s silly to capitalize every occurrence of a proper name in a pleading.)
Your premise is that the general rule (single spacing) should be overturned because there’s a specific situation (heavily abbreviated text) where it doesn’t work as well.
First, I’m not yet convinced that’s true, though you’re welcome to post an example of what you mean. Even in legal documents, most abbreviations are contained within citations (and citation rules often call for removing unnecessary spaces to avoid the problem you mention.)
Second, if we go with your rule, the text will look bad the other 95% of the time. One can always imagine situations where a typographic rule leads to a bad result (and that’s why typographers spend a lot of time making manual adjustments) but that doesn’t invalidate the rule.
Matthew,
While I remain unconvinced (as of now), I am grateful for your sharing your expertise. It probably takes a geek of some sort to even care about this stuff, and I really appreciate having a forum to discuss issues that are important to me.
To the matter at hand, I don’t think my premise was that single spacing is best only with heavily abbreviated text, just that it is an even better choice in that situation. If I understand your point correctly, you think that the combination of the punctuation plus the capital letter is enough for clarity.
However, the period is, by far, the most common abbreviation (except for really confused(?), enthusiastic (!) and/or angry (!!?!) folks . And names, when used formally, usually include a period followed by one space followed by a capital letter (Mr. Smith), right?
So if I understand your POV, you believe that even when using a lot of abbreviated titles, as in the facts section of a brief, the reader can easily differentiate between instances where period/space/initial cap signifies a break between thoughts and those instances where it signifies a name. I think that if you read carefully and without interruption, this is true, but if you are often interrupted (say, by phone calls) while reading, then it’s easy to get lost.
My goal, which may not be clear, is actually NOT to go trolling on arcane websites. It is in fact to learn and improve my writing. I could well be wrong on this one. I simply think that it’s at least an issue that is less clear cut. Of course, the underlying problem is that periods are used to abbreviate and to end sentences. If another punctuation was used for abbreviations, there would be no confusion at all. Good luck with that one!
Your suggestion that I post an example is a good one. I notice it all the time - except, apparently, when I need an example for illustrative purposes. I’ll make sure to post one when I notice it again.
If my comments seem merely contrarian rather than informational, please let me know and I’ll impose a heavier filter on my self-editing.
Cheers,
Christopher
I can’t agree to treat this as a matter of opinion, open to debate. I’m not presenting this as my opinion. I’m sharing a rule that is the consensus view of typographic authorities. While I often hear from folks that double-spacing is correct, no one has produced any authority for that position. I’d be happy to see that authority. But until then, this strikes me as about as fruitful as arguing about whether “irregardless” is proper English. (It’s not.)
Okay, one last try and then I’m happy to leave it:
I never stated that double-spacing was “correct,” did I? In fact, I explicitly said “I do not doubt that experts agree” that single spacing is “correct.” Respectfully, however, I’m not sure you have (yet) answered the substance of my query: which style best enhances clarity?
I think this is not like “irregardless” because in that case, there is a correct word (”regardless”) expressing the identical meaning. This is more of a question of what the law is, and what it should be - such as the existence or non-existence of punitive damages in a particular kind of case.
Closer to the point, it’s perpaps more like style rules in a particular jurisdiction. For example, General Rules of Washington 14.A lists various exceptions to Bluebook, such as mandating that in Washington, numbers zero to nine only are spelled out, not numbers zero to ninety-nine as per Bluebook 6.2(a). There is no question as to what the law in Washington is: it’s 42, not forty-two (any Douglas Adams fans out there?). It may, however, still be a matter of opinion as to which form better enhances clarity.
Bottom-line: Although I am chair of a local rules committee (and thus do care more about rules than most lawyers), what I care about most of all in legal communication is achieving clarity. Rules are generally secondary to clarity for me - and the primary reason I am active on rules committees is in fact to help improve clarity. To me, it’s not irrelevant that there is a “consensus view of typographic authorities;” it’s just not the only issue.
I believe that in addition to your expertise, you have clearly thought about this a great deal. This is why I have asked for your opinion on the substance of my point.
With respect,
Christopher Rao
Yes, I believe that one space between sentences improves aggregate clarity. Are there ways to make the separation between sentences more obvious? Sure, you can always isolate anything on a page and emphasize it. If I put a giant red dot at the end of each sentence and then four word spaces, it would improve “clarity” in the narrow sense. But it would also be distracting and annoying to read, which would impact clarity in a broader sense.
Typographic rules are not about maximizing the clarity of the parts, but of the whole. One space is perfectly sufficient to indicate the end of a sentence. Two spaces are overkill. That’s why it’s the rule.
Well put.
Cheers,
Christopher
There’s a bunch of authoritative citations for and against double spaces in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_spacing#General%20preferences .
I should point that many (most?) of us computer scientists use double spaces, if nothing else from the influence of Emacs and TeX (we like having an in-text way of distinguishing full stops from other periods).
Fair enough, but this is “typography for lawyers”, not “typography for computer scientists”.
I conceded at the outset that double-spacing is acceptable with monospaced fonts. Computer scientists use monospaced fonts more than anyone (writing code, using Emacs, etc.) so it wouldn’t surprise me that double-spacing persists as a habit.
This article caught my eye. As a graphic designer I thought I had a tough crowd to educate, my clients. But it would appear you have a harder ‘row to hoe’. Good luck.
Amazing stuff. The wikipedia page about spacing has been subtly enhanced with & # 160; entities in between sentences to modify html’s normal single space presentation. You’ve put three spaces in your example paragraph to make a point that apparently doesn’t stand on its own. Supreme Court examples are just governments out of tune with modern practice. States that differ are too small for consideration. And those silly computer people have nothing to do with practicing law!
For a consensus position that is mandatory, beyond debate and never contradicted by any authority, it sure seems like a stretch.
I’m retired now but spent forty years coming to the realization of the utter good sense of what you’re saying and demanding that my associates follow the one space rule. A [very small] benefit I don’t see mentioned above that you pick up all those spaces for more arguement in page-limited briefs and notes.
[...] is good. Take a look and bookmark the site for future reference. I will, if only as a reminder to stop putting double spaces between my [...]
I am with Christopher. I prefer two spaces between sentences because I believe it improves clarity. The end of a sentence should be the end of a complete thought. It is nice to have a little extra space as a reminder that the preceding thought is now complete and to prepare oneself for the next one. In legal briefs in particular, I also agree with Christopher that there are a lot of extraneous periods from citations and such that make the quest for something else to provide greater clarity even more pressing. And, whether it was a holdover from days-gone-by or not, the last law firm I worked for required two spaces at the end of a sentence in all the briefs we filed.
As to substance, I’ve covered this one exhaustively.
One of the premises of this website is that what lawyers and law firms do out of habit is not consistent with standard professional typographic practices. The corollary is that turning an incorrect practice into a habit doesn’t make it correct.
Practical tip: find-replace two spaces with one to make sure your document is consistent.
I do proofreading for a law firm with offices around the U.S. and overseas. Even though the firm’s house style is clearly stated as one space between sentences, many of the attorneys and several of the marketing assistants who send me materials for proofreading still use two spaces. It’s really irritating, but luckily very easy to fix; I just do a “find and replace” before activating Track Changes and making actual changes. Since my copy apparently is the version that becomes the master copy, that solves the problem without cluttering the proofed document with a zillion instances of replacing two spaces with one. But it would really be nice if they’d just do it themselves!
The search and replace tip is good, with one caveat. It’s not uncommon in legal documents for writers to solve other formatting problems with multiple word spaces (e.g. signature lines). If you replace all double spaces with single spaces, it can have unintended consequences on those other multiple-space sequences.
I’m glad that after surfing the web for uch a long time I have found out this information. I’m really lucky.
HISTORYTEACHESUSTHATMANYMANYYEARSAGOWE
USEDTOWRITELIKETHISEVENTUALLY SPACES lowercase letters and, further down the line, punctuation was introduced.
A style (for lack of a better term) exists because of the technology of the day and it’s application.
Since we no longer chisel letters into stone tablets for writing, it’s unnecessary to use all caps with little-to-no spacing. Also, more people are literate, so it’s not required to read your passages to them, making punctuation an absolute necessity. Furthermore, MB makes his case clear that we no longer use typewriters, so double space between sentences are obsolete.
Who would you consider a professional? A typographer? A writer? An English teacher? How about the MLA?
In that case, consider yourself told by a professional and it is unanimous among us… double space between sentences is not an accepted standard by the Modern Language Association (MLA) nor is it accepted by writers, editors or (gasp!) typographers.
So stop clinging to old ways and get with the times people!!
The typewriter-monospace-obsolete-get-over-it line of argument does not sway me at all. In fact, I think it quite backwards. For monospace fonts, the period occupies as much space as any other glyph, and so has *less* tendency to disappear than in proportional fonts.
Modern readers skim more than ever before (see Jakob Nielsen’s “How Little Do Users Read?” at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html ), and I believe 1.5-2 spaces after full-stop enhances clarity.
I am not much concerned with the “overall balance of white space,” nor impressed with the prescriptions of authorities who themselves may not be “in tune” with modernity.
“How little do users read” refers to the behaviour of browsing web visitors. I would dearly hope that a practising lawyer’s reading exceeds 20-28% of the material they find.
Skimming is a reality in the casual world, but please do not skim when billing by the hour. Read every word if possible.
You need to actively call upon HTML control codes to get extended spacing in a web page - it concantenates multiple space characters in one as part of its natural operation. You could put ten spaces after a full stop in your web page and it would still be shown as one. Getting that 1.5 space gap in HTML is pretty awkward stuff. From a very basic perspective this will mean that your printed correspondence does not match your rich text emails.
The best rule, whether or not any particular person accepts single or double spacing, is to be consistent with the one you choose. It’s better to be consistently following an unorthodox standard than crazily veering between the two.
Personally, I find that this rule causes grief for certain readers: the dyslexic. It is much more difficult for a dyslexic person (like me) to read a paragraph that has only one space between the sentences. Two spaces cause a gap that allows the dyslexic reader to piece the sentences together in the correct order. Without the second space, the sentences more easily become jumbled together. Please make more consideration for those of us who can’t read well. Thanks.
As a European that has always used double spaces at the end of sentences, I have heard about this “rule” agreed upon by “authorities” many times since coming to the US thirty-five years ago. I found it very useful that MB has contrasted two versions of the same sentence, one with single spaces and one with double spaces. After reading both sentences a few times, I now feel much more comfortable with continuing to break that “rule.”
At least for the goal that I aim to achieve when I place a period at the end of a sentence, there is no question that the double space is better: In reading the sentence with double spaces, I found it natural, almost instinctive to include a pause between sentences. I want my readers to feel that pause. I want them to experience each sentence as an independent unit. I want the thought that each sentence expresses to be clearly separated from the next thought.
When I was reading the single-spaced sentence, I found myself having to make an effort to regard those periods as substantially different from commas (from which they differ by just a few pixels). This is one of those rules that ought to be broken.
My goodness it’s amazing how many people can’t be swayed… and will swear blindly that two spaces aids in readability, even in the face of every single professionally-set newspaper and fiction book, the very food of reading! *rolls eyes*
I’m so glad InDesign even has a GREP (automated function) for changing multiple spaces to single spaces (and hyphens to en dashes amongst others).
@NATE
There is a font specially created to assist in better reading for dyslexics:
http://www.readregular.com/english/background.html
I hope it may help you
Christopher: “And names, when used formally, usually include a period followed by one space followed by a capital letter (Mr. Smith), right?”
Actually Mr shouldn’t have a period/full stop after it at all. Most professional style guides for editors agree that ABBREVIATIONS should have a period/full stop (e.g. etc. abbrev.), but CONTRACTIONS should not (eg Mr (Mister) Dr (Doctor) St (Saint/Street).
*giggle to self* funny how you two-spacers can’t do two spaces in your comments due to coding standards *snicker*
I am a Russian lawyer, and English typography, and even language, are not my specialisms, but having red this discussion I found one argument which most of native speakers just cannot be aware of.
When I was trained for Test of English as Foreign Language (TOEFL), which was almost six years ago, putting double space at the end of each sentence in the written part of the test was an absolutely mandatory rule. Single space automatically led to reducing your score. This is how I got accustomed to put double spaces in English text (not in Russian, however, since in Russian typography single space is an absolute rule and this is out of question).
If this TOEFL rule still exists, and all foreigners are forced to put double spaces, I would definitely question whether the rule is that established and recognized…
The problem with one space is evident when involved in technical writing. Abbreviations, such as inches (in.) that spell words when abbreviated require a period that is not designed to end a sentence. The only way to distinguish the post-abbreviation period and that which ends a sentence is using whitespace to clearly mark the end of a phrase. Therefore, when using a period within a sentence structure (as in abbreviation) - one space, when ending a sentence with a period designating the end of a phrase - 2 spaces. It is understandable that many folk don’t see this dilemma, but if involved in serious technical writing it is required.
When training as a journalist, I learned to use one space between sentences as a space-saving matter, part of AP style. To the best of my knowledge, a single space is incorrect style in the absence of such an invented rule.
Again, to those who share Ben’s view that one space is “incorrect style” and “an invented rule”: I renew my challenge to show me a professionally-typeset newspaper, book or magazine that uses two spaces between sentences. Why? Because these types of documents are the most apt benchmark for legal typography.
Other types of documents — technical articles, TOEFL exams — may have good reasons for requiring two spaces between sentences. But, consistent with the title of this website, I’m only interested in typography for lawyers. And lawyers should not be modeling their documents after TOEFL exams, etc.
That’s an argument I could potentially get on board with. To me, the purpose of the (invented) AP style rule is to save ink and paper, thus saving money (which is probably why those books, newspapers, and magazines use a single space between sentences). Lawyers should save their clients money, so perhaps conserving space, ink, and paper is a way to contribute to that goal.
Aside: MB, do you go back into the Comments and delete “extra” spaces from between sentences? That would be fun.
I don’t have to change the comments — the single space is automatic. The way HTML is specified, web browsers display any sequence of word spaces as a single space. To get a real double space between sentences, you have to use special HTML codes. (Another reason to prefer single spaces as the general rule.)
I suppose using single spaces does save paper (slightly) but the main reason it’s preferred is appearance: blocks of text have a more consistent color and texture to them. “But MB, 50 years from now, typographic fashions may have changed and we might all be using double spaces again.” You’re right, and if that happens, I’ll change my opinion. Until then, I’m filing double spaces next to all my bell-bottom trousers, which are also awaiting a comeback.
I am a legal word pro operator. I find it somewhat amusing that when typing we are to use two spaces at the end of sentences (which really goes against my grain). Yet if we scan text and convert it to Word, only one space appears and that is acceptable. It should just be one space but I can’t convince the rest of the world.
There’s a much more important rule, one which obviates this one: don’t use ragged right margins. When paragraphs are fully justified, there’s no such concept as a “single” or “double” space. Every space is some variable amount of width. Proper typesetting software will take steps to ensure that no space, be it interword or intersentence, is too large. (Note that using hyphenation, not enabled by default in MS Word, is extremely important here to avoid bad breaks).
Now, I certainly agree that one should not *force* an extra space between sentences, that certainly does look bad. However, professional typesetting systems (i.e. TeX) recognize that there is more flexibility inherent in the inter-sentence space, because your mind has reached a logical stop at the end of the sentence. Therefore, it may use this flexibility to add a (small) amount of additional space between the sentences in order to avoid bad breaks.
To prevent this is to force it to make bad typographical decisions in other places to keep the line the correct width, such as increasing overall inter-word space on the line, or hyphenating a word. Given those two other options, extra space after the end of the sentence is preferable.
Thank you, Christopher. MB keeps challenging us to look at every book and newspaper - which I immediately did - and I dicovered that he left out an important factor. All of these sources are fully justified thus creating even more space between words and sentences making it quite easy to read. When you are forced to leave an unjustified right edge, then you have a situation that Christopher is referring to and that I, in agreement with him, find difficult to read. All Supreme Court briefs and Appellate briefs at my large firm are filed with two spaces. And if this makes it more accomodating to a judge’s eye and is more visually appealing, why would I listen to a typographer? I’ll take subtlety any day.
Yes, sophisticated typesetting systems offer a range of customizable word and sentence spaces. However, lawyers, like most people on Earth, use word processors that only have one space character. So we must take that as our baseline.
Justification is a distinct issue. Even books and newspapers that use justified text still only have one actual space between the sentences. (For the same reason: two spaces would open up an overlarge gap, and then when the extra justification spacing is added, the problem would get even worse.) So if you like justified text, great, but you still should use only one space between sentences.
“But my firm doesn’t do it that way!” Your firm can do whatever it pleases. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a rule.
Wow. You like your authorities — as if that ends the question. The problem with this one space “rule” is that there has not been sufficient justification for it. The best argument seems to be typographical (i.e., “rivers” of white space), but there is little to no consideration of the countervailing point that many people claim to find two spaces after sentences easier to read. There should be some empirical evidence about whether one or two spaces helps discern the sentence breaks before some “rule” is arbitrarily pronounced where there was no rule before. Otherwise, let people do what they want as long as they’re consistent.
Yes, as an ethical prescriptivist, I do like my authorities. (Did I mention that the Seventh Circuit also agrees with me on this point?)
But there’s no descriptivist argument in favor of two spaces either. Nobody has yet shown me a professionally-typeset newspaper, book or magazine that uses two spaces between sentences. They all use one space.
Why is this important? Because it defeats the premise that this is not an actual rule, but rather an arbitrary edict of a shadowy typographic cabal. How can it be arbitrary if it’s the accepted practice of nearly all professional typographers? If this issue were truly ambiguous, wouldn’t we expect to see more professionally-typeset materials that used two spaces?
Hey, if you prefer using two spaces between sentences, go right ahead. But it’s like saying “I’m never going to use the subjunctive tense. I find sentences easier to read without it.” It’s a free country. You’re allowed to disregard the rule. But the rule will still exist.
MB: It may be true that most of the world uses Microsoft Word, but most of the world does not write professionally. Lawyers do. For a site dedicated to advancing proper typography among the legal profession, this comes across as a weak argument. If anything, consistency in your message would demand that you advocate that lawyers use TeX.
And you seem to miss my point. Certainly, one should not make inter-sentence spaces twice the width of inter-word spaces. As you point out in the intro, that looks very poor indeed. Rather, given the choice between making a poor line break (hyphenating a word, perhaps at an undesirable location) and slightly increasing the width of an inter-sentence space, the latter is always preferable to the former. You ask for examples of professionally typeset texts that use so-called English spacing. I will counter with examples of ostensibly “professionally” typeset texts that demonstrate horrific line breaks, with massive interword spaces, and which could use all the help that they can get. (e.g. every casebook by Foundation Press, the popular blue-and-red tomes that line many a law student’s shelves).
This assumes that your text is justified. Which, if you are writing professionally, it is. If you really want a challenge, try finding professionally-typeset books that don’t fully justify text. Given this hard constraint, one must optimize the remaining soft constraints as best as one can.
Its worth pointing out, however, that expansion methods in microtypography, as implemented by InDesign and pdfTeX, are a more comprehensive solution to the line-breaking problem. Compared to these solutions, the use of English spacing appears as a cheap hack — these methods are capable of beautiful typesetting, even with fixed word/sentence spacing. Which is to say, they render this issue moot.
…when these features will make it into Microsoft Word, however, is another question!
“Writing professionally” is not synonymous with “justifying your text”. For instance, flipping through the Sunday New York Times on my desk, I can see that about 25% of the text is left aligned, not justified. As for books, I agree that justified text is more common, but left aligned text holds down a healthy minority (see, e.g., Edward Tufte’s Envisioning Information).
If you want to set your legal briefs in TeX or InDesign so you can maximize typographic control, I salute you. But that’s not an option for most lawyers. This is not a manual on fine typography. This is a guide to doing the most you can with the tools you’ve got (and the time you’ve got).
PS. I own InDesign. I like InDesign. But as a litigator, I can’t imagine using InDesign for any of the documents I have to crank out on a regular basis. It’s just not practical. I use MS Word (on Windows) or Pages (on the Mac). Yes, they are more limited than InDesign. But if I can squeeze good typography out of them, anyone can.
luckily, I use Courier New, your type-writer style font, so I can continue to double space after sentences.
Your claim that “The extra spaces between sentences disrupt the overall balance of white space in the paragraph” needs to be supported by something more than vehemence and a notion of balance that others do not share. (Nor should it be assumed that everyone who feels that two full spaces are too much would agree that one full space is sufficient.)
LaTeX interprets any multiple spaces as a single space by default. You have to explicitly use a command to get more than one space between words or at the end of a sentence.
And AMEN. My law review required the 2 spaces after the end of every sentence for our submissions; yet, they then typeset the final documents in LaTeX. Go figure.
Daniel, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing#Grammar_guides
for support on why double spacing disrupts reading. Below is a bit of information that’s not in the Wikipedia article:
About face: Reviving the rules of typography (2004):
“Visually, a page of text should appear as an orderly series of thin, horizontal, evenly textured lines, separated by channels of clear space. If the setting is loose, there is a tendency for the texture of these lines to appear uneven, fractured, and, in the worst cases, broken. Persistent use of over-large word spaces…can align with spaces in other lines to create white, vertical ‘rivers’ through the text. Comprehension will certainly be impaired if the type cannot keep the reader’s eye on the line, and a tightly spaced line will greatly help” (page 92).
Or Dowding’s “Finer Points in the Spacing and Arrangement of Type” (1995):
“A carefully composed text page appears as an orderly series of strips of black separated by horizontal channels of white space. Conversely, in a slovenly setting the tendency is for the page to appear as a grey and muddled pattern of isolated spats, this effect being caused by the over-widely separated words. The normal, easy, left-to-right movement of the eye is slowed down simply because of this separation; further, the short letters and serifs are unable to discharge an important function - that of keeping the eye on ‘the line’. The eye also tends to be confused by a feeling of vertical emphasis, that is, an up & down movement, induced by the relative isolation of the words & consequent insistence of the ascending and descending letters. This movement is further emphasized by those ‘rivers’ of white which are the inseparable & ugly accompaniment of all carelessly set text matter. … Of course, in solid, i.e. unleaded settings such faults, both of word- and of letter-spacing, are especially noticeable” (page 29).
Hope that helps!
Plinko
[...] our fonts are porportioned correctly, we no longer need to double space to set off our sentences. In fact, it looks weird if you do it. (see the example on that page). It also creates formatting issues, and wastes precious character [...]
@3L: TeX and LaTeX automatically put extra space after words and somewhat less extra space after commas. If you don’t want that, you have to turn it off with French spacing. When I used TeX, I used to type Prof.~Knuth to indicate that the period after Prof wasn’t ending a sentence, and to instruct TeX not to put a line break between ‘Prof.’ and ‘Knuth.’ If Microsoft Word added extra space after periods and commas, we wouldn’t need to.
An invisible punctuation rule that is blissfully free of any semantic baggage: the second space after . : and ?
Passionate defenders of the rule go so far as to declare it a rule of grammar. Their opponents just do not want to see blank snakes running through their copy. It is a lovely rule because it is so arbitrary, so it’s ever been thus.
Few of the debaters on either side are both old enough to remember the origin of the rule and to have had hands-on experience applying it. The rule exists for the same reason as the QWERTY keyboard; its purpose is to slow down typing.
Mechanical typewriters were prone to jamming. When you press the key, the arm flies up and strikes the ribbon and then needs time to fall back out of the way for the next arm. The keyboard layout mitigates the problem by arraying the arms corresponding to common letters, such as the vowels, further apart. Because the keys were mechanically linked to the arms, they also need to be kept apart. Keys that are physically close together, accordingly, are more likely to jam.
The key jam problem is acute when the complication of shifting is added. The end of the arm has both the upper and lower case type. Which strikes the ribbon depends on the position of the carriage, raised with the shift key. The sequence . SHIFT key to start a new sentence has more parts in motion. The period key arm is falling, the carriage is rising, the space key is moving the carriage to the left. If you add to that ballet the next letter, to begin the sentence, a jam is likely to follow. A second space allows the period arm to come to rest and the carriage to fully rise.
When the old office Remingtons and their cousins gave way to electric typewriters, the second space rule followed because jamming was still a problem. Even though an electric motor was doing the heavy lifting, the arms still needed time to get out of the way. When the ubiquitous IBM Selectric replaced the arms with the ping pong ball, jamming became much less of a problem and what jamming did occur had nothing to do with ending one sentence and beginning another. No carriage moved, all the shifting between upper and lower cases took place by rotating the ball.
Yet the rule persisted.
Comes then the PC with the dot matrix printer and the daisy wheel printer and the rule persists. After all, Courier 12 point (computer) looked exactly like Courier 10 pitch (typewriter), so the same paragraph on one should look identical on the other, with two spaces following the punctuation at the end of a sentence.
Arrives next justified paragraphs by inserting enough spaces anywhere they fit to take up all the positions in the line. But now there’s a problem because it no longer looks like there is more space at the end of the sentence. So, part of proof reading becomes finding those and inserting another (logical) space to maintain the appearance of conforming to the rule.
Fully proportional spacing and fonts come along and make the problem subside because two spaces now look almost right compared to the variable width space on the rest of the line.
So, what began as a workaround for a contraption invented over 100 years ago persists almost 50 years after the contraptions were replaced. It’s as if we insisted on turning the non-existent crank handle on the front grill of our cars before getting in to drive
[...] If you haven’t been doing this, start doing it. Here’s why. [...]