Pick up an older book and see. You could have used as many spaces as you cared to, websites will only display one, though. It says a WIDER space. Getting rid of the two spaces after a period is like getting rid of the Oxford Comma – a clear sign of generational depravity, laziness, and ignorance. No author can exist and succeed without the help of others, so it is best to format it to the way in which the agents, editors, etc like and expect it. I’m glad you posted this and the resulting conversations. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY AND GOOD IN THIS WORLD – GET OVER IT!! It’s sad to see modern typographers so unaware of their discipline’s history, even willing (as a group) to rewrite their profession’s history to mask the true business motivations and technology failings that justify current practices. Filling the forms involves giving instructions to your assignment. That’s debatable and it’s not the only consideration. Plus, all these short cuts that is being taught in language is quite scary! Never mind how wonky justification made spacing look, but my current employer demands 2 spaces after the end of a sentence, whether it’s a period or question mark or exclamation. Once you set up your word processor, writing in manuscript format doesn’t take any extra effort. Pick up almost any book from that era and you will find the extra spacing. Sorry it upsets you so. Comtempory book publishers have universally abandoned the practice, and I suspect that this abandoment will continue to spread. That looks okay too. Many thanks. The information needed include: topic, subject area, number of pages, spacing, urgency, academic level, number of sources, style, and preferred language style. See? I grew up typing on computers without using monospaced fonts. I am 75 years old and I think I have made enough accommodations in my life. It’s the actual letting go of that double space after all of these years. Using one space makes you look like a moronic texting teen. Hi Monty! Justifying creates uneven spacing between the words that makes it harder to read. In 1986 I bought a Macintosh and have made my living as a graphic artist and typesetter. When you know better, you do better. When you put a double space at the end of a line, the program automatically places a period in its appropriate spot and starts the next word with a capital. If I apply this to your traffic sign analogy, I suppose we would be building colorful fences around traffic signs to emphasize that a traffic sign is there. Let’s say that you have the following two sentences: I bought 2 books and read several articles. Single-double spacing doesn’t qualify as a mess-up to me, so it’s easy to ignore. in today’s character limit way of communicating, sentences have come to be viewed as single line items. I know my grammar is not perfect and my punctuation could always use a good editor. This is because a period can be used within one. Early home printers produced type in a very limited selection of fonts and styles, not much more refined than the typewriter (five-option dot matrix? Here is what Harlequin specifies: Before you submit, be sure to check each agent’s/publisher’s requirements. I’m not talking about illustrations, I mean like when someone picks up a note and then we see the handwriting of the note on the page, or, say – a newspaper article formatted like a real article, maybe with a photo – How do you indicate that this is what you want on your manuscript. Especially for book setting, functionality is very important. asst. I agree. I will continue to double-space, and fully agree with several previous comments about the ease of reading a document with double spacing at the end of sentences. (I’ll bet you hate ellipses, too. Also, it seems weird to me that the first paragraph in a chapter is not indented. Double-spacing just looks weird with proportional fonts. I just downloaded them for my use. In reality though the reason why in most cases you should refrain from two spaces is when the line breaks and could cause a new line to start with a space. In 1972, when I learned to type on one of the ancient typewriters, it was drummed into our heads that you put TWO spaces at the end of a sentence between the period and the start of the new sentence. For most of them, the pedantic thing is that anyone *cares* how many spaces should go between sentences. After the Transitional style the experimentation continued and the contrast was raised even further. Kerning adjusts the space between individual letters such as a combination of AWA. But if were dichin tradishin then Y even get ^pity about any of it? Like you, I consider typing class to have been one of the most valuable classes I ever took. No. Here you see a lot of spacing issues and horrible justification choices. The blogging software I use evidently takes out extra spaces. Thank you, Jennifer. Also, I used the hit-the-space-bar-manually-five-times rule (if there is such a rule) for the first line on each paragraph of my manuscript. It’s only with the introduction of the typewriter that there was a temporary regress in typography. This is already reinforced by the period, the space and then the use of a capital letter to denote a new sentence. I would rather think a bit more than getting a headache from reading. I have decided to make my own one copy of handmade book which would be kept as a memory of me writing my first book ever so, in that case, A5 layout is a little bigger than the normal classic books, i want to know what size of the paper is the best for my book! So much so, in fact, that I named my younger daughter Jennifer. When you have an increased sense of awareness of the typography when you’re reading it, something is wrong. Single space is arbitrary and has nothing to do with typewriters or better aesthetics. I’m all for maintaining standards for the written word. I can and will teach my teachers to teach their students this new age rule but man, I’m not sure I can change this in myself! Stupid question. Believe me, there are many, many, MANY more important things going on in this world. I take great joy and pride in being an old fart. We may be the last to use them, but we do use them. I’ve been writing my manuscript using just the default Calibri style in Microsoft Word, and now want to switch to a standard format. (Reproduced in Douglas McMurtrie’s “The Book: The Story of Printing & Bookmaking,” Oxford University Press, 1943, p. Are you implying I should stop my career as a type designer and typographer and try to establish world piece instead? Or two? I understand that chapters start on a fresh page, but how should I break up my parts? Two spaces, plain and simple, makes it MUCH easier to read anything anyone has written. Once they saw my version they had to admit it was a drastic improvement and paid me to use the logo even though in this particular case I wasn’t commissioned to improve their logo. Second, and implied in the first, the absolutism of your article is just silly. You want the reader to have a comfortable experience, after all. Now that this post has been out a few weeks, I find myself bracing for the next comment: Those who like the article tend to just give it a “like” on Facebook, but those who don’t actually log in and comment. It took centuries to define what works best. We are simply trying to make language more accessible. I hope you come back here, too! Do we really need to cater to the business people who are only using double spaces because they grew up with the typewriter? But, in writing, I think aesthetics–in the sense of how words appear visually on the page, whether they look pretty or not–must take second billing to the need for clear expression. So it seems it’s still more justified to cater to the ones who prefer a single space. Everyone makes spelling mistakes and I don’t know anyone who can remember all those grammar rules we were taught in school. //