The Limits of Science
Science can blow your mind sometimes, and this time it has come down on the side of *two spaces after a period*. https://t.co/tuBpFjyTCc pic.twitter.com/bRMN3V7Zfk
— Justin Wolfers (@JustinWolfers) April 28, 2018
This is why we shouldn't pretend science can answer ethical questions: it can tell us whether one or two spaces is more readable, but not that double spaces are an abomination to be put to the flame. https://t.co/xO5pJsTIA0
— Turduckin Recursion (@lessdismalsci) April 28, 2018
Traditionalists, those using fixed-width fonts, and oldsters with long-ingrained muscle memory demand two spaces. Modernists, particularly those who have grown up doing everything in proportional fonts demand one. Coders ask, “Why isn’t it a system-wide option in the display device?”Report
I was taught two spaces. When I started seeing people using one, I assumed they were dummies and needed to correct. Then I heard that the two space thing was really about type printers or printing presses or something and doesn’t matter. But I do find it visually distracting with the one space… I’m not sure if that is a force of habit or an actual visual thing.Report
It’s situational for me. As far as typing, my right thumb does two spaces at the end of a sentence, it’s done that since I learned to type the summer after sixth grade, and I’m probably never going to be able to teach it otherwise. In situations where the text is left-justified and the same inter-word space is used everywhere, I find two spaces easier to read. In fully-justified text, where the inter-word spaces are variable, one space is visually better.
Best of the Bloom County strips debating on the subject.Report
I used to be like both of you. I thought two spaces were/ought to be the default and it grated to look at something written with one-space. I also had a strong muscle memory of almost automatically doing two spaces (I was taught to type ca. 1987 in middle school).
My current boss, however, is a big one-spacer. She also has a strong graphic design background and knows a lot about fonts and whatnot (things that make my eyes glaze over). She’s converted me to one-space’ism. And now, to me, two spaces grates on me the way one space used to.Report