One Space or Two After Periods?
Loyal LG readers may notice that I always put two spaces after my periods; it wasn’t always this way, though. (Aww, I didn’t even use Bluebook ellipsis back then.) During undergrad, I had explicitly rejected the notion of adding an extra space after a period. ”It’s a remnant of an archaic practice from typewriters!” I would tell people. So what changed?
The summer of our 1L year, absentee LG granddaddy Andy interned for Judge D. Brooks Smith of the Third Circuit, who was apparently adamant about the practice of adding two spaces after periods. Andy and I tend to steal quirks from each other, and so Legal Geekery became an exclusively DSAP (double space after period) blog.
I recently began thinking about the double space issue again after reading this article about Judge Robert Kressel, a Minnesota federal bankruptcy judge, cracking down on the use of legalese and poor grammar in his courtroom — a sentiment which I strongly endorse. If I see one more brief in Pennsylvania starting with “AND NOW COMES,” I’m going to go insane.
Anyway, I noticed a comment on the article from friend of Legal Geekery @ouij:
I support clear writing, good grammar, and proper syntax. Putting two spaces after sentence-ending periods is none of them. It is a typographical convention, born in the days of Smith-Corona mechanical typewriters, and obsolete now.
in ancient times, there were no rules on spacing. Why would there be, after all, when all documents were drawn up by hand? The only people who cared about spacing were typesetters, who had to worry about fitting cast metal type elements onto lines in a visually pleasing way. Skilled typesetters used variable spacing: by inserting strips of lead of differing widths, they could achieve a visually balanced result.
Manual typewriters, however, could not insert spaces of differing widths, nor achieve well-balanced, justified columns. For the convenience of typesetters, then, typed manuscript producers inserted additional spaces to indicate the end of sentences.
(As an aside, French, Spanish and German typographers only require one space after a sentence-ending period. )
Now, of course, nearly all documents are prepared on word processors that can do nearly as good a job as the old typestters, inserting variable spacing and doing away with the need of the additional space. To insist on “two spaces after the sentence-ending periods” is folly, since the reason for the convention is now obsolete.
Of course, the mindless adherence to ancient and obsolete forms is a skill at which common lawyers have been singularly adept over the centuries.
My feeling is that for purposes of typesetting, double spacing after a period is more aesthetically pleasing than single spacing when using proportional typefacing. Check out this website for a good visual comparison of single and double spacing after periods using both proportional and monospaced fonts.
What are your thoughts? Do you single space or double space? Have you had any experiences with professors, attorneys, or judges who have expressed a preference either way?
Related posts:
I had an undergrad professor that would mark off .01 point for ever double space after the period. Dramatic but it broke me of me double space habit. Though I must confess that depending on the font I sometimes add it for visual clarity, though somewhere inside me remembering her class, the undergrad me cringes when I do.
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i always use double spaces. i learned that as a kid, and i find it easier to read documents that have the sentences split off with double spaces after the periods. single spaces drive me nuts.
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I will expand on my comments here.
Adding two spaces after a sentence-ending period is not objectionable if the text is to be typeset “flush left, ragged-right.” It becomes annoying where people insist on having justified columns (flush left, flush right) that the double spacing becomes problematic, opening voids and leading to bizarre word-spacing as the word processor’s typesetting algorithms try to stretch sentences to span whole columns.
For a vivid illustration of that particular problem, see here:
http://www.thestranger.com/images/blogimages/2009/03/04/1236192412-ikindle1.png
This sample also illustrates the wisdom of hyphenation in typesetting. Single-spacing with proper hyphenation would result in much more compact, legible, and, frankly, beautiful text.
Here’s how that Renaissance master printer, Aldus Manutius, would have approached the problem:
http://www.coloradocollege.edu/Library/SpecialCollections/Illuminated/images/D.Jackson0020.jpg
Ideally, of course, the hyphens should “hang,” and not be counted as type elements in the line–but it’s a rare book indeed that implements that trick.
http://courses.cit.cornell.edu/hist151/Images/JromPapr.jpg
My ideal type design would combine Aldus’s humanist and italic typefaces with Gutenberg’s hanging hyphens. But then, that’s typography, not lawyering.
Where I am obliged to prepare documents flush-left, ragged-right, I use the double-space. Where I prepare documents left- and right-justified, I should avoid it.
Naturally, none of this is a problem when I use LaTeX.
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One space. I agree it’s an obsolete convention; serves only to make documents unnecessarily longer.
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Two spaces for work except after an ellipses/period combo. Local legal style manual so requires. But in everyday usage, usually one.
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Agreed with Butterflyfish above – I was a single-spacer all through college, as my professors (English and Chemistry alike) preferred that convention. However, I interned with a Superior Court judge here in Pittsburgh over the summer and on my first opinion, the only truly negative thing the clerk had to say was, “And you know the Judge likes two spaces after his periods, yes?”
So for work, especially for things that are going to be seen, I add the second space. In this comment? I have not. :)
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Two after every period. I was an English major in undergrad and its still the formal norm there. I find it much easier to read as well.
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Double. It’s easier to read.
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Before working at a law firm, I was a single-spacer in everything. After working at law firm, I double space everything. It just became a habit, just like using Anglicised spelling. :-[
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Really? All this over a space! I just had a discussion with a co-worker which led me to do an internet search and I found this website. I’ve come to this conclusion: it doesn’t matter! Seriously, it’s a reader/writer preference. If your boss likes to read with two spaces…do it. If you prefer to write with one…do it. Ummm, unless the boss thing applies.
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