There is a danger that the space wars may erupt all over again. Not a war in space, thank goodness but a war about the number of spaces to put after a full stop (or if you are from the USA, after a period).
The background story is that for many years people learning to type with a typewriter, and in particular students in the USA learning to type with a typewriter, were taught to put two spaces after a full stop. Every letter in a typewriter occupies the same width, because of mechanical limitations, and it was claimed that typewritten pages were therefore difficult to read. Adding two spaces after a full stop made them easier to read, apparently. This two spaces rule was never applied to published books or newspapers, just to typescripts.
Of course, the advent of personal computers and word processors and desk-top publishing software with proportional text and programmed-in kerning should have relegated the two spaces practice to the status of a quaint historical reminiscence, like the smell of typewriter correction fluid. But alas, it lingered. Especially among the generation who had learned to type their high school term papers.
In recent years, most professional style guides have indeed stated that two spaces were unnecessary, much to the relief of almost everyone. But this week, the two spaces forces are unexpectedly striking back. The latest edition of the prestigious Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association (often known as the APA Style Guide) has declared that two spaces are needed after full stops in manuscripts, to make life easier for reviewers.
This decision has caused a bit of a rumpus in some circles. The SpaceWaste blog points out quite correctly, that HTML parses two or more spaces as one space, and that to force the size of two spaces to appear you would need to type in the six characters that signify the HTML non-breaking space element.
I expect some people to get very overheated about the one space/two space issue in the coming weeks. I was never required to type my papers (and still today my typing style is to say the least, idiosyncratic, so I don’t understand why some people treat their views on the number of spaces after a full stop as some sort of religious dogma. I am happy to remain a pluralist – which means I think everyone is entitled to their own opinions. My personal opinion on spaces is “singularist”, but if a client were ever to specify that their document must conform to the latest APA style guide, I’d happily give them as many spaces as they wanted.
