Published Date: January 15, 2014

Two spaces between sentences, or just one?

That is the question.

twospacesI know, it’s a bit of an odd question, but, by no means am I the only person who has thought about it (see wikipedia entry on sentence spacing). I write with one, and it seems off to me reading anything with two (such as Rich’s most recent blog post).

But, that said, two spaces is not some totally weird thing that came out of nowhere. Far from it. Growing up, all my school papers contained two spaces between sentences. I remember the process distinctively: hitting the period key, and then tapping space bar twice. My mom was a teacher, so I likely had a bit more English training than many and two spaces is what everyone was taught to be proper.

Sometime since I graduated college in 2005, I switched over to using one space – I think it was actually at Zillow when I started writing online rather than just school papers.

At least on the web, it seems the norm is one space. Not two.

If there is anyone reading who is entrenched in the academic world, I’d love to know whether the standard is still 2 spaces as it was when I was in school?

[Photo via http://www.slate.com/]

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