Craig Wise

Since I began working as a professional writer and proofreader over ten years ago, I have always been impressed by the grammatical proficiency and stylistic ease that my coworkers bring to their writing. That being said, there is one common mistake that truly sticks in my craw, chaps my hide and feels like fingernails on a chalkboard to me—double spacing after a period.  

To save my sanity and help our double-spaced holdovers understand this issue, I’ve put together the following information.

Dreary Mono-spaced History

Double spacing after a period was once an official practice for all business and personal correspondence, as well as for all printed material.

During the days of typesetting and typewriters, all typefaces were mono-spaced—every letter took up the same horizontal space, so an “i” was equal in width to an “M.” In order to help readers recognize the termination of a sentence (a period), a double space followed every termination.

The Gloriously Proportional Present

Personal computers and digital presses have brought us real (proportional) typefaces—an “i” is now much slimmer than an “M” and double-spaced terminations are no longer necessary. We’re well past the days of the Underwood or the IBM electric typewriter. Our Internet-based company has no need for outdated typing.

However, the anachronistic typewriter habit has been perpetuated by uninformed high school typewriting/keyboarding teachers. In fact, my own dear Mr. Hamilton taught the entire Bear River High graduating class of 1993 (long ago yes, but well after the Apple PC) this bad typographical practice.

In short, if you still practice and adhere to using double spaces after a period, you’re showing your age.

Authoritative Resources

You don’t have to take my word for it. After all, I’m only a graduate of Utah’s finest cow college. Style guides from both the business and academic worlds are agreed on this single (spaced) point.

The Associated Press Stylebook—eCollege’s preferred style guide

Punctuation—page 334
Spacing: Use a single space after a period at the end of a sentence.

Publication Manual of the APA

Spacing and Punctuation
Space once after all punctuation as follows: after commas, colons, and semicolons; after punctuation marks at the end of sentences; after periods that separate parts of a reference citation; and after the periods of the initials in personal names.

The Chicago Manual of Style

Space between sentences
In typeset matter, one space, not two (in other words, a regular word space), follows any mark of punctuation that ends a sentence, whether a period, a colon, a question mark, an exclamation point, or closing quotation marks.

Note to all readers: Stop perpetuating this unnecessary typographic habit. You no longer need to press the spacebar twice to end a sentence. You are free.

“To my mind, a million books and magazines single spaced also qualify as a resource. I once heard an instructor arguing for two spaces in typeset text, completely oblivious to the single-spaced mountain of material that he reads every day. When this was pointed out to him, he quietly dropped his argument. He’d for years been blind to the type that he actually reads.”
— John McWade