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Should There Be Two Spaces Between Sentences?
by Tim Donnelly, guest writer —
I
f you look closely at any professionally-printed magazine or book, you'll notice that there's only one space separating two sentences. Why not two? Your tenth-grade typing teacher drilled it into your head that two spaces were proper. Your teacher was right but, times have changed.

Equal space
In the days of monospaced typing (like a typewriter), it was proper to type two spaces between two sentences. The reason was that all of the characters on a typewriter had the same amount of space allotted to them. A capital "W" was allotted the same space as a capital "I." Two spaces were used so that a reader's eye could easily see that one sentence had ended and that a new one was beginning.

Tailored to fit
In typesetting (and now, word-processing and design), letters are given proportional amounts of space. A capital "W" is allotted much more space than a capital "I." Because of this, one space is enough for a reader's eye to comprehend the start of a new sentence. More space looks awkward and will disrupt flow of reading.

An additional thought.
Web pages display only one space between sentences and it's tough to work around this. HTML is set up to display only one space no matter how many times you hit the spacebar in the coding. Though the coding may show multiple spaces, your browser will only display one unless you specify a special "non-breaking space" character.

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