Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period. | Hacker News Reader

Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period.

slate.com

12 pointssgman24 comments

"But I actually think aesthetics are the best argument in favor of one space over two"

OK. Some people think two spaces look better. Who cares?

The argument this article makes: "Typographers say it looks better. Readability? Evidence? Lol, what's that?"

I'll happily continue using two spaces and being able to parse sentences programatically (e.g. `dis` in Vim).

Programs can display two spaces after sentences however they like (e.g. HTML, LaTeX), but the raw text having two makes it easier to parse.

I only ever use two spaces. I have always been under the impression it makes it easier to distinguish the end of a sentence and, therefore, readability.

However, I think this was posted about a month ago and the reaction was mixed. Half think it's absurd to use two spaces, the other half think it's absurd not to. The real message here is that it's not a big deal either way and no one should really give a shit.

edit: I just realized hn actually takes two spaces and condenses them into a single space. Weird.

That's a basic property of HTML display - collapse of 'extraneous' whitespace.

Indeed; you can add as many "breaking" (normal) spaces as you like in HTML, and it will only show a single space. To add explicit spaces, use non-breaking spaces.

This article bothers me in that it doesn't seem to distinguish between the formatting of the text and the final appearance. It's as if one was to decry "emphasis should be added with italics rather than asterisks!" Whence this the tyranny of WYSIWIG?

I use two spaces after sentences because it allows my antiquated but efficient text editor to distinguish sentence endings from abbreviations. When I hit meta-k, it kills what I want. I suppose a sufficiently fuzzy AI could figure it out, but I'd probably prefer the explicit control. I trust that when printed it will be adjusted.

Browsers usually collapse these spaces down to one, and any typesetting program will realize that all spaces don't have to be the same width. Shouldn't the tirade be directed against the software rather than the user? Are we at least allowed to continue to use two newlines after a paragraph or must we now avoid that too out of fear of excess vspace?

TeX, one of my baselines for good typographical rules, does not do a double space after sentences, but neither does it do a single space; it's more like a space and a half (unless you turn French spacing on, in which case it is just a single space). So I feel he's wrong on substance. Additionally Emacs uses it for sentence motion and that's important enough to me to retain the practice, particularly given that if I care enough about the typesetting to do it properly I'll be using TeX.

My instinct, is to include two spaces after a period. I think this is largely due to a business studies class - where I was told that 'two is standard'. It feels weird to only include one space.

My tendency to add two spaces, provides me with a tactile confirmation that I've ended the sentence - which seems to add positively to the rhythm of writing.

I'm not sure I could break the habit of including two spaces even if I wanted to; I touch type and I think the process of typing is too deeply embedded in my brain's neural networks to change it now.

No matter how many spaces are included - when presenting text, one space after a period, can always be rendered as standard; so I'm not totally sure what the problem is. Happily, two spaces are rendered as one in HTML markup (unless a   entity is used.

Mavis Beacon told me to use two spaces when I was learning to type properly in the 90's.

...but Robin Williams told me the Mac is not a typewriter, and I assume that generalizes to Windows and Linux systems, so it is not clear to me why I would care what Mavis Beacon says.

When you get Mavis Beacon installed on your Underwood you will achieve enlightenment.

Mavis Beacon had never apparently heard of the numeric keypad, or the Ctrl key, so what would she know?

I agree. From now one I will use three spaces instead of two.

I use 2 now, but to compromise I'll start using 1 1/2.

(Apologies to Stan Kelly-Bootle)

Not entirely on-point, but there's a remarkably fascinating documentary I watched on Netflix one night called "Helvetica." Check it out.

Agreed; two spaces looks like crap, and I've always quietly removed any extra spaces from all the copy my company has published. It just seems so blatantly wrong and inefficient that it blows my mind that otherwise seemingly intelligent people would consciously perpetuate this anachronistic folly.

Really? It blows your mind that people who were taught to use two spaces allow their muscle memory to continue typing two spaces in the absence of any incentive whatsoever to break the habit?

You must have a mind that can be blown by a light breeze.

It's simply so glaringly extraneous. And don't discount the author's point about how ugly it is.

How'd this make it through the dupe filter? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2103428

(edit: because of the query string. Is it too much to ask HN readers to search before they submit?)

why not automate this, have a job run when an article is submitted to cluster it and if the cosine similarity is very high to a previous submission in the past n months reject it? Seems pretty easy for such a traffic'd site.

I don't think I've ever known anyone who uses two spaces.

If you learned to type on a typewriter, you probably do.

If you do a lot of work in monospace fonts (like many computer programmers), two spaces continues to improve the visual appearance.

But overall, I give this issue a definite "meh."

Anybody want to make a browser addon that removes double spaces after a period, or adds them, according to a user preference setting?

I used to be newsletter editor for our local caving club, and two-spacers abounded with submitted material. I do it myself, but I also use the excuse that most of the stuff I type is in fixed-pitch fonts, where I actually want there to be two spaces. Plus I learned to type on a typewriter and old habits really do die hard.

But when I made the newsletter, I search-and-replaced them all to a single space.

And I'm pleased HTML renders it properly no matter what. That way I can keep my two spaces when editing HTML in vim, but still see the correct rendering.

It's the traditional American typewriter standard, which carried over into some text editors: http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Sen...

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