If there's extra space, will anyone care or notice?

December 8, 2011 9:31 PM

A hopefully simple question about web-based article formatting...

I started a food blog a couple of months ago. It's just about things I like to eat, places I've eaten, reviews, recipes, bucket-list food desires, etc.... I won't mention it here as I'm not looking for MetaPromotion, but it's starting to get some traffic and I'm curious:

I was raised to type two spaces after a period, but I've read in various places that that's no longer required or needed - that one space is ok?

What's the proper formatting on the web for spacing after a 'period'? Is there a reason why two spaces was necessary to begin with in the pre-web world? What's the proper format?

I'll admit, my space-bar thumb gets lazy from time to time.

posted by matty to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: One period is enough. The correct spacing is built in to modern typesetting engines and fonts. I believe the reason was originally that in a monospaced world, typewritten text is more legible with two spaces after a period.

Two spaces are possible.  I find that it reduces legibility.  It makes the text 'foam up' for me.  Your mileage may vary.  Note that it is actually quite difficult to get two spaces to display in HTML.   HTML rendering condenses any number of normal word-spaces into one.  In this paragraph, I had to resort to tricks to get double spaces.
posted by krilli at 9:37 PM on December 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: It's a touchy subject, as this lengthy thread from earlier this year shows. The trend is towards one, though, seeing as two spaces is a holdover from typewriter days, and web-based stuff tends to privilege single spacing, even to the point of reformatting text with two spaces.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:39 PM on December 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

The theory is that with fixed-pitch or monospaced fonts two spaces was better for readability.

You will probably have to use NBSP on the web no? The last typesetting system I worked with (xyvision) I don't think there was a way to key two spaces without some trickery, or at least I never managed it.

Indeed, the last time this came up I called our typesetting systems expert and asked him, he got mad for me even wasting his time asking.
posted by Ad hominem at 9:49 PM on December 8, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: One space. As Ad hominem notes, that rule was for typewriters, which used monospaced fonts. In the computer age, there's no need to do that.
posted by Gilbert at 10:46 PM on December 8, 2011

Oh please don't use NBSP.
posted by The Lamplighter at 11:08 PM on December 8, 2011 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Technology dodges this one for you - anything more than one space in HTML gets condensed into one space, like this! That was 10 extra spaces, but you'd never know it was any more than one.
posted by soma lkzx at 5:11 AM on December 9, 2011 [1 favorite]