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

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8 pointsnoyalizor11 comments

I hate advice like this. Hate it. It should not be my job to worry about how things will eventually be rendered, that's the job of the type-setter, page renderer, or someone else.

I should be able to lay down text in whatever format is useful, easy, convenient, or relevant for me, not for them. I put two spaces after periods so I can easily find sentence endings and beginnings. I put two spaces after periods because it helps my flow when I'm writing. I put two spaces after periods because when it's rendered in mono-space on my system it looks better. When I'm writing it's not my place to worry about how it will appear on the page. It's the content.

Have we learned nothing about the separation of concerns, of content from layout?

If I then drop it into HTML, or LaTeX, or LibreOffice, or PDF, or some other document presentation system, that's when I should worry about how it looks, and the two spaces after the period should have no effect.

At least, not if the rendering system is competent and capable.

Two spaces is a sensible convention for distinguishing inter-word spaces from inter-sentence spaces. If it's being typeset then the spacing can be adjusted then.

It's also not true that this is just a convention left over from typewriters. Typeset books frequently have more space between sentences than between words, particularly when the text is justified.

> Have we learned nothing about the separation of concerns, of content from layout?

You're whole argument violates this separation of concerns! By typing two spaces, you are inserting layout concerns into your content.

If layout is the concern of the render, then your editor should increase the visual distance between sentences if that is what you need, for example with an option to override the font's typographical parameters or one to add extra sentence spacing for monospaced fonts.

Sorry about the length of this reply, I lack the time to make it shorter.

  >> Have we learned nothing about the separation
  >> of concerns, of content from layout?

  > You're whole argument violates this separation
  > of concerns!  By typing two spaces, you are
  > inserting layout concerns into your content.

That turns out not to be the case. The two spaces I type are not for layout, so they are not violating the principle of separation of concerns. They are for production and processing of text. I find it trivial to type the two spaces, they match my thought processes as I type, and they make automated parsing and processing of the text by ad hoc scripts easier. In other words, they are fit for purpose in improving my productivity, exactly matching the primary concern - efficient production of written output.

  > If layout is the concern of the render, then
  > your editor should increase the visual distance
  > between sentences if that is what you need, for
  > example with an option to override the font's
  > typographical parameters or one to add extra
  > sentence spacing for mono-spaced fonts.

How it appears in my editor is not the point I'm making. It's fine in my editor, and it suits the way I work. If typographers say that printed works should not have two spaces after the period, then that happens after I've produced my text and it goes for final render. Therefore having two spaces in my text is not a problem. Well, should not be.

Layout is the concern of the final rendering system. While producing my text, whatever helps me produce it faster is of value, and having two spaces between sentences helps me. It's not a visual thing, it's a programmatic thing. I'm frequently running scripts over my text, and things like two spaces makes things easier. Saying that my editor should increase the visual distance between sentences is entirely missing the point. The two spaces is not a layout issue.

Typographers might dictate while the final renderings should be like, but they should not dictate my production processes. Personally, I find that text produced to the recommendations of these professional typographers who have studied these things and produce work they declare to be better is, in fact, for me, often less attractive.

The author of this article only comes as really butthurt.

Also, the article starts off so prescriptively as stating that two spaces after a sentence is just WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG. Then later in the article goes on to admit that '[t]ypographers can point to no studies or any other evidence proving that single spaces improve readability. When you press them on it, they tend to cite their aesthetic sensibilities. As Jury says, "It's so bloody ugly."'

I remember this article. Rereading it confirms the author's only explanation is "some of us don't like it." Insufficient cause for me (or anyone) to change our behavior.

I adopted the two space convention in the late 70s because m-A / m-E in emacs text mode would take you to the front/back of a sentence by looking for the double spaces. I do not believe this had any negative impact on my professional career nor personal life.

When I see one space I shake my head and I go, Aye yay yay. I talk about 'type crimes' often, and in terms of what you can do wrong, this one deserves life imprisonment. It's a pure sign of amateur typography. Two spaces is correct, there is no other answer, and all those who dispute this are infidels worthy of violent death.

Two spaces is correct if, and only if, type is to be set in a monospaced font or you are using a text processing toolchain that does something sane and sensible with two spaces in the input text, like uses it to distinguish between sentence-ending punctuation and, say, periods used to end abbreviations.

Actually using two spaces at the end of a sentence in proportionally-spaced output text is just plain horrible.

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=why%20you%20should%20spaces%20...

Great summary and references for use in two-spacer discussions!

Article from 2011.

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