French spacing

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"French spacing" is a French and English typographical term with three meanings:

1. in Typing: the standard French typists' approximation (with single-width spaces) of traditional typesetting's spacing rules.
2. in Typesetting: a relatively recent synonym for traditional typographic spacing rules: the traditional typesetting spacing rules standardized for several centuries but since the 1960s, following extreme commercial pressure on English-language typographers, only preserved in common use by French typesetting.
3. in Typing: in an Americanization dating to the mid-1990s, the standard English typists' approximation (with single-width spaces) of traditional typesetting's spacing rules.

In common usage, French spacing refers to one of the typists' approximations:

1. In America today, French spacing often means double-spacing of sentences, semicolons, and colons.
2. In America before the mid-1990s, in all other English-speaking countries, and in all French-speaking countries, French spacing always means single-spacing of sentences, semicolons, and colons, but with additional spacings between most punctuation and text.

It is unclear how the meaning became reversed in the recent Americanization. It is clear, however, that the reversed meaning is only an alternative usage in America rather than a standard usage—assertions that French spacing means double-spaced sentences, and that American practice is single-spaced sentences, are usually contested or queried by a non-trivial proportion of respondents.

Contents 1 Overview 2 Context: spacing rules 2.1 Background 2.2 Traditional typesetting's spacing rules 2.2.1 Overview: general usage and standard space definitions 2.2.2 Specific: standard spacing rules 2.3 Examples of traditional double-spacing 2.3.1 British 2.3.2 American Declaration of Independence 3 French and English spacing 3.1 Origin: the typewriter 3.2 French spacing rules and English spacing rules 4 Evolution of typing, typesetting, and French and English spacing 4.1 Influence of typewriter approximations 4.2 After World War II 4.3 Desktop publishing 5 Americanization 6 Modern use of traditional typography's spacing rules 7 Readability 8 Style preferences 8.1 General preferences 8.2 Style guides 8.3 Designers' style preferences 9 Computer software 9.1 Overview 9.2 Text editors 9.3 Web browsers 9.4 TeX 9.5 Microsoft Word 9.6 Operating systems 9.7 Postscript fonts 9.8 Character encodings 10 Technology and approximations: input vs output 11 Related spacing rules 12 See also 13 External links 14 References

[edit] Overview

Historically, typesetting in all European languages has a long tradition of using spaces of varying widths for the express purpose of enhancing readability. American, English, French, and other European typesetters' style guides—also known as printers' rules—specified spacing rules which were all essentially identical from the 18th century onwards.

The single-width space is a relatively recent invention, dating from the invention of the typewriter, which carried over into computer keyboards and subsequent electronic font definitions.

Following the widespread adoption of the typewriter, French spacing and English spacing were terms describing French-language typists' and English-language typists' differing standardized typewriter approximations with single-width spaces of traditional typesetters' spacing rules:

• French spacing inserted spaces around most punctuation marks, but single-spaced after sentences, colons, and semicolons.^[1]
• English spacing removed spaces around most punctuation marks, but double-spaced after sentences, colons, and semicolons.^[2]

[edit] Context: spacing rules

[edit] Background

Starting with Gutenberg, European typesetting (continental and British Isles) used a wide range of various width spaces and alternate-width letter and ligature choices in order to enhance readability and appearance and to facilitate justification. Alternate-width letters and ligatures were quickly discarded as requiring too much effort for normal use (but remain best-practice among sophisticated typesetters), but the 15th century attempt to further discard alternate-width spaces was quickly rejected by readers as too difficult for normal reading. Typography then standardized on an essentially common set of spacing rules, using multiple width spaces.

Multiple width spaces were for several centuries universally retained even in high-volume commercial printing. Their usage formed traditional typesetting's spacing rules.

[edit] Traditional typesetting's spacing rules

[edit] Overview: general usage and standard space definitions

Gutenberg replicated in print the preceding best-practice. After a brief period of experimentation with close-fitted type after Gutenberg, traditional typography resiled to the previous ideal (originally calligraphic then proxied typographically), and did not change materially between the mid-18th century and the late-20th century.

Different width spaces were used for various specific purposes. In general, as well as separating words and sentences:

• spaces separated most punctuation marks from their associated text, with some exceptions:
  • no space preceded a comma or a full stop (period)
  • (increasingly frequently) no space preceded a closing quotation mark following a period or comma
  • a long dash^[3] (shorter dashes were always space separated) normally had neither preceding nor following space
• spaces following words or punctuation were subject to line breaks
• spaces between words and closely associated punctuation were non-breaking

Additionally, spaces were (and still are today) varied proportionally in width when justifying lines, originally by hand, later by machine, now usually by software. That is, a justified line containing for example em spaces and en spaces would have both types of spaces lengthened, but their relative proportions would be retained. Kerning is only indirectly relevant to the topic of French spacing but as whitespace it too followed the same principal of proportionality (whether defined optically or otherwise).

By the latter 18th century and throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, typesetter's spacing rules were standardized on fractions of the em or cadratin (sometimes spelled quadratin). Standard spaces included one em or cadratin, one-half em (en space) or cadratin demi, one-third em (sometimes: thick space), one-quarter em or quart de cadratin (sometimes: thin space or espace fine^[4]), one-fifth em (sometimes: hairspace, but note that this term also refers to extremely fine or finest-possible spaces), and so on.^[5]

Note that the term thin space is historically a variously defined space, even more so than other non-em-defined space names, and varied in definition with every technology. Linotype and Monotype included a range of shims under the label thin space, including narrow hacksaw blades. Unicode today specifies a thin space to be "1/5 em (or sometimes 1/6 em)" while Microsoft suggests 1/8 em is usual among French typesetters for "a thin space". Jacobi in 1890 defined a thin space to be 1/4 em and this was widely adopted as the standard at the time—Microsoft notes that "some" French typesetters use this today.^[6]

[edit] Specific: standard spacing rules

The traditional typographic spacing rules are:^{[7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]}

• em spaces separate sentences, being placed after sentence-delimiting periods.
• 1/3-em (three-per-em) spaces or less commonly half-em (en) spaces separate words, punctuation-separated clauses, and structurally separated phrases or words, being placed between words and placed after non-sentence-delimiting periods, commas, semicolons, and colons.
• 1/4-em (four-per-em) and smaller spaces separate most punctuation marks from their associated text, being placed between quotation marks and their enclosed text (except in the case of a closing quotation mark following a period or comma), between text and a following colon or semicolon, between text and a closing exclamation mark or question mark, and between em or en dashes and their surrounding text.
• no space separates a hyphen or (normally) a long dash (1.5 ems) from its surrounding text.

For example, the Linotype—a typesetting machine introduced in 1886 which along with the later Monotype revolutionized the typesetting industry by allowing high-end results quickly and with relatively little training; the Macintosh of its day—came with an operator's manual cum style guide which described (documentedly until at least 1930, although operators' comments suggest this was standard until at least the 1980s and early 1990s) the preferred method of approximating with their equipment the standard sentence spacing rule:^[17][18]

Sentence Ending.

Between sentences drop a spaceband and a thin space. This will give you a space of approximately one em.

French typesetters' spacing rules went further than this, providing particular rules for particular usages to a greater depth.^[19] For example, it had additional codified spaces such as the espace mot (between 1/3 and 1/4 of a cadratin), and it always placed the espace fine insécable (the non-breaking thin space) around tirets cadratin or em dashes. However, in essence and overview they conformed to the above.

A caveat to the above is that individual typesetters could and would override the general standards, whether for particular books, for particular topics or purposes, or for particular printing houses' "house rules". For example, Morris's Kelmscott Press, the driving force behind the original fine printing revival (see below), prided itself on altering these standards on a book-by-book and even page-by-page basis;^[20] De Vinne's landmark 1901 style guide suggested that ideally (if rarely practicably) the space following a comma would be less than the space separating an unpointed word;^[21] and poetry's typesetting was extremely variable, for example Morris recommending close-setting and both De Vinnes and Bishop recommending loose-setting: "Setting poetry is open matter".

[edit] Examples of traditional double-spacing

[edit] British

The spacing differences between traditional typesetting and modern mass-production commercial printing are easily observed by comparing two different versions of the same book. Googlebooks provides scanned images of two English-language printings nearly a century apart of the same traditional Celtic mythology tale from the Mabinogion:

1. 1894: the Badger-in-the-bag game—traditional typesetting spacing rules: double-spacing
2. 1976: the Badger-in-the-bag game—modern mass-production commercial printing: single-spacing

The modern version demonstrates late 20th century mass-production commercial practice. The older version demonstrates thin-spaced words but em-spaced sentences—effectively, double-spacing. It also demonstrates spaces around punctuation according to the rules above and equivalent to French typesetting today (and to modern high-end English typesetting: see below). Close observation reveals some of the particular space usage variations, for example, closing quotation marks after a sentence-terminating period taking no preceding space.

[edit] American Declaration of Independence

The printed and widely distributed American Declaration of Independence (1776) clearly shows wider spacing after sentences, typically double-width or even wider. It also shows wider spacing after some commas, apparently when separating semantically significant phrases and clauses.

[edit] French and English spacing

[edit] Origin: the typewriter

The introduction of the typewriter allowed ordinary people to create typewritten text without the requirement for professional typesetting equipment or professional typesetters, and without the concomitant delay. This led to enormously greater use of typewritten text, particularly in formal contexts.

However, typists were restricted to a fixed-width space. Since typewriters were initially monospaced fonts, the only space available was the em space.

Each new printing technology historically has similarly had various restrictions on what can and can not be achieved practicably, and has similarly led to the adoption of technology-specific rules approximating the previous ideal. The adoption of the typewriter led to the adoption of French spacing and English spacing.

[edit] French spacing rules and English spacing rules

With the typewriter, French and English typing standards diverged, adopting alternative typewriter approximations of the essentially common typesetting standard.

• French typists promoted the thin and thick spaces to em spaces and retained the previous spacing rules.
• English typists demoted the fixed space to a notional thick space and discarded the previous spacing rules for spaces surrounding punctuation.

Mapping of approximations onto ideal

Typographic Spacing Rule's space	French spacing	English spacing
non-breaking thin space	non-breaking space (espace insécable)	–
non-breaking thick space	non-breaking space	–
breaking thick space	breaking space	breaking space
breaking em space	breaking space	2 breaking spaces

(English typists made one exception: when typing punctuated clauses, in order to keep the original total whitespace around the punctuation and thereby maintain the previous visual separation between the clauses, the punctuation's (colons' & semicolons') following space was promoted to an em space.)

French spacing was arguably a more logical transformation from multiple-width spaces to fixed-width; English spacing was arguably a more efficient transformation in terms of typing and paper-use.

The outcome was that French spacing had single spaces between sentences but a great many additional em spaces between text and punctuation (e.g., spaces precede colons, semicolons, exclamation marks, and question marks, and are inserted between text and enclosing quotation marks), while English spacing had no spaces between text and punctuation but double-spaces (two notionally half-em spaces equals one notional em space) following colons and semicolons and between sentences.^[22][23]

These approximations were taught and used as the standard typing techniques in French- and English-speaking countries, respectively.^[24] For example, T.S. Eliot typed rather than wrote the manuscript for his classic The Waste Land between 1920 and 1922, and used only English spacing throughout: double-spaced sentences.^[25]

[edit] Evolution of typing, typesetting, and French and English spacing

[edit] Influence of typewriter approximations

Typesetters continued to follow the original standards, but increasingly started to adopt the typists' typewriters' approximation as their typesetting style, particularly in America but also in the UK and France.^[26]

The reasons were predominantly commercial rather than stylistic. A key change in the publishing industry from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century was the enormous growth of mass-produced books and magazines. Increasing commercial pressure to reduce the costs, complexity, and lead-time of printing deeply affected the industry, leading to a widening gap between commercial printing and fine printing.^[27] For example, T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land was originally published by a high-volume commercial printer according to its house rules and it was not until its third publication that Eliot was satisfied with its typesetting.^[28] William Morris stated that this commercialism was what led him to create and drive the fine printing revival (see below), saying elsewhere: "I spend my life in ministering to the swinish luxury of the rich".^[29][30]

In summary, the underlying reasons were:^[31]

• ease and speed, since far less physical type and more importantly far less skilled effort was required
• cost, since fewer man-hours were required and the condensed text required less paper
• cultural, since new typesetters (and readers) had grown up with typewriters and the standard typists' spacing approximations of good typesetting

With regard to cost, the bulk of the cost was typesetting-cost-related rather than paper-use-related. For example, even during the "austerity years" following World War II, British newspapers and magazines retained English spacing despite the cost and local scarcity of paper, printing rationing-friendly egg-less and butter-less recipes in wide-spaced English spaced and even traditionally spaced articles.^[32] And where 19th century works were commonly produced in 6-point type and smaller in extended lengths, e.g. 500+ pages,^[33] yet were regarded then and now as easily readable, modern printers use much larger type despite the much greater paper requirements, regarding these small sizes in modern typesetting as unreadable. Paper cost may have been an influencing factor but was not and is not the driving motivation.

Where before the First World War virtually all English-language books were printed following standard typesetters' spacing rules, by the end of the Second World War most American books and an increasing proportion of English books were printed following the typewriter's English spacing approximation rules.^[34][35][36] By the 1960s it was rare even in England for ordinary English-language books to be printed using standard typesetters' spacing rules.

[edit] After World War II

Around World War II, a further regression in typesetting occurred in the "low end" of the industry, leading to a third form of standard spacing rules which today dominates publishing. High-volume low-cost mass-produced printing (e.g., newspapers, pulp-novels, magazines) started to use only single-spacing between sentences and after colons and semicolons, to the point of being standard commercial practice in low quality mass-print-runs from the 1950s onwards in America, although adopted more slowly in other English-speaking countries. Again, the reason for this appears to be cost, or perhaps profit, rather than readability or style. Its adoption started with the cheapest works and only over time moved into the more expensive works.

The English spacing approximation was retained in higher quality (and higher cost) printing, contemporaneous with single-spaced printings. For example, the US government's official style guide mandated its use in 1959 for all government documents regardless of printing method:^[37]

To aid readability, an em quad (or double-space) is used at the end of a sentence. This applies to all types of composition, and includes Teletypesetter, reproduction, and other printing. Unless otherwise specified, this rule will apply.

By the time of the landmark computer typesetting program TeX's creation, and at least up until 1993,^[38] this was still known even in America as English spacing (sometimes: American typewriter spacing). For example, people wishing to produce only single spaces between sentences in TeX need to switch on the French spacing output option.

[edit] Desktop publishing

The introduction of non-commandline DTP software by the Macintosh in the mid-1980s and its subsequent widespread adoption eliminated the previous cost-restriction that had driven the switch to single-spacing. There was no longer any material marginal cost associated with typesetting double-spaces, or even multiple-width spaces.

Despite this, resistance to double-spaced sentences started to grow among English-language professional designers and typographers as they became more directly involved with typesetting. French spacing continued to be the uncontested norm in French-speaking countries,^[39] but English spacing became increasingly deprecated in English-speaking countries.

Additionally, there has been a designer-led trend towards closer-fitted text in general.^[40][41][42] For example, an increasing number of computer font design guidelines now recommend use of quarter-em spaces rather than third-em spaces. This trend appears to be driven by a desire for uniform graphical appearance rather than usefulness to the reader: designers' comments and fonts' guidelines are usually accompanied by long-discredited^[43][44] warnings about "rivers" of whitespace reducing reader comprehension or comfort. Ari Rafaeli, for example, wrote in Book Typography:^[45]

...unfortunately the basic tenet (the 'absolute principle', as Ruari McLean calls it) of close word-spacing is not very well observed ... slovenly composition with excessive word-space and the deplorable rivers of white [sic] which occur as a consequence is now quite common.

With regard to spacing, modern designers are retracing the steps of the 19th century design-led typographer William Morris. Morris rejected the restrictions of commercial typesetting which at the time demanded traditional typesetting's spacing rules, and, declaring a "rage for beauty", advocated close-set type and dark "color" (lack of whitespace, creating uniformity of appearance). But this rage for beauty did not and does not necessarily translate to reader comprehension, or even appreciation. The reason Donald Knuth gave for creating the landmark TeX typesetting system was his dismay on receiving the proofs of a new edition of his book The Art of Computer Programming at the unreadability of the then new close-fitted phototypesetting technology, which he described as "awful" due to its "poor spacing".^[46][47] The leading style guides of Morris's time documented that readers of the time had the same reaction to Morris's output as Knuth did later to phototypesetting's output. De Vinne, for example, wrote in The Practice of Typography:

"Printed words need the relief of a surrounding blank as much as figures in a landscape need background or contrast, perspective or atmosphere." (p.182)

"White space is needed to make printing comprehensible." (p.183)

And in Modern Book Composition he wrote:

"Unleaded and thin-spaced composition is preferred by the disciples of William Morris, but it is not liked by the average reader, who does need a perceptible white blank between words or lines of print. During the fifteenth century, when thin leads and graduated spaces were almost unknown and but little used, the reading world had its surfeit of close-spaced and solid typesetting" (p.105)

Although his best work, such as The Canterbury Tales in 1896, was, and is still today, regarded as outstandingly skillful by most typographers, Morris's Kelmscott Press was supported by "a private fortune" rather than reader sales.

Nevertheless, and despite designers now conforming to profit-driven modern commercial practice rather than demanding and creating an alternative as did Morris, this renewed drive towards closer-fitted text added greater weight to the deprecation of double-spacing by designers and still does today.

[edit] Americanization

By the mid-1990s, French spacing was observed to be occasionally used in America to refer to English spacing. The earliest use of this inversion was apparently 1994 by the University of Chicago Press.^[48] By the mid-2000s this usage had been widely asserted on the internet. Of particular note is the widespread discussion in 2006 of double-spaced sentences, labeled at the time "French spacing", on some blogs.^[49]

Americans who have contested or queried the reversal of meaning typically fall into one or more of three groups:

1. high-end typesetters, including TeX power-users
2. at the opposite end of the spectrum, traditionally taught typists with little exposure to DTP
3. those who have personally seen older books

It is not clear why this reversal occurred.

• It is possible that the relatively many extra spaces in traditional French spacing were conflated with the double-spaces in traditional English spacing.
• It is possible that the term may be colloquially derived from the professional printing industry. It is relatively difficult to add double-spaces to text that is typeset using a hot metal Linotype machine. Spaces were added to the text using wedges, which automatically fully justified the text, but two normal wedges together introduced problems. A workaround using an en space followed by a thin justifier-space might have been thought of as "fancy" (or "French") and cost extra.^[50][51]
• It is possible that the increasing ease and "mass-democratization" of computer typesetting in the 1980s and 1990s led newly enabled professional English-language designers and typographers to resent the lightened color and loss of automatable artistic control caused by double-spaced sentences, leading to widespread adoption of an attempt to further discourage the practice by labeling it as alien.^[52][53]

Extra to but potentially compounding the above, it is possible the internet has created a form of self-reinforcement:^[54]

In the post-Google world, people seeking information about something unfamiliar or uncertain, particularly if seen in internet discussions or assertions, tend to search the internet. If they then post their findings back to a searchable site, such as a blog or a discussion forum, whatever they have found will be more heavily asserted by later searches. Google-searches and other search engines therefore tend tautologically and exponentially to reinforce the most recently and most commonly asserted internet-asserted beliefs.

With regard to French spacing's reversal of meaning:

• search engines tend not to deliver information earlier than the mid-1990s since that was when the internet started in earnest, and this is the time of the earliest inversion of the meaning of French spacing
• most decades-old typography books and reference manuals are not on the internet, let alone those centuries old
• search engines' algorithms tend to heavily weight blogs and recently-updated websites

This tends to suggest that the recent Americanism has been accelerated in uptake by the internet. For example, most internet objections to the re-definition cite non-internet sources whereas many internet assertions of the re-definition cite internet sources. As another example, the internet-supported but peculiarly worded explanation—suggesting a single colloquial source—that hot-metal typesetters regarded double-spacing as "fancy" and therefore "French", is remarkable for not being repeated by, nor affirmed by, anyone claiming to have actually worked on Linotype machines as a professional printer.

An American publishing consultant to the legal profession (which uses double-spacing in formal documents in most English-speaking countries) noted in 2007 that French typography conforms to the original meaning of French spacing rather than the revised American meaning:^[55] (emphasis added)

French spacing (e.g., setting two spaces, rather than one, after a period) is not a distinctly French phenomenon. ... Just pick up a copy of Le Monde and see how it’s set. The spaces between sentences are no greater than the spaces between words.

There are plenty of differences between the way copy is set in France and the way it’s set in the U.S. ... some of which involve the spacing around punctuation. For instance, thin spaces separate guillemets [quotation marks] from the text they enclose, and spaces are set before question marks, exclamation marks, and colons.

An article published by a Canadian law firm is set one way in French and another way in English. Despite all the little differences, note that even the French don’t use French spacing at the end of a sentence

[edit] Modern use of traditional typography's spacing rules

Though far less common, publishing houses still occasionally print books using traditional typography's spacing rules. For example, the photographic reprint of E. H. Carr's The Twenty Years' Crisis (Harper Collins Perennial, 2001) has wide spacing not only after periods, but also after colons and semicolons; and also has spaces before the latter two marks as well. Quotation marks, though they are doubled as in U.S. practice, also have a series of adjustments similar to the traditional typesetters' spacing rules. For every passage enclosed by the marks, a space follows the opening set of quotation marks, and one usually also precedes the closing set, unless the original text ends in a period, question mark, or exclamation point. If there is not one of these three stops, nor a comma, between the closing quotation mark and a superscripted reference number for a footnote, a space is added to separate them.

[edit] Readability

No material research by typographers has been published regarding the relative readability of double-spacing versus single-spacing.

This is not unusual. Typography as an industry is remarkable for having almost no good-quality empirical research performed by typographers to support its industry-standard "rules" or design assertions. The solitary material exception so far, Colin Wheildon's landmark study Communicating, or just making pretty shapes?,^[56] found empirical support for some design assertions but for others found empirical support for their opposite, leading to occasionally vitriolic reactions from designers: "Wheildon's book was the only graphics/typography/design/art/drawing book I ever threw out in a fit of rage."^[57] Unfortunately, Wheildon did not test the effects of double-spacing versus single-spacing sentences since single-spacing had not been significantly asserted as a design guideline when he started his research in the mid-1980s.

However, a great deal of research into readability and typesetting (if not typography) has been published by psychologists and computer-vision professionals. The findings are significant, consistent, uniform, and substantial:^{[58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67]}

• spacing has real impact on readers' comprehension and on readers' comfort
• clear text unit groupings sharply improve reader comprehension and reader comfort
• close-fitted text reduces reader comprehension and sharply reduces reader comfort (implying increasingly-reducing reader comprehension for longer texts such as books)
• spacing is used as semantic "hinting" for the eye
• readers elide enlarged spaces within text and between text blocks without effort or distraction

Specifically regarding double-spacing's most commonly asserted negative effects, it has been proven that:

• "rivers" of whitespace do not distract readers^[68]
• widened spaces between sentences improve reader comprehension and reader comfort^[69]

Unusually for sociological research—extraordinarily so—no valid or even scientific studies have materially contradicted these findings.

[edit] Style preferences

[edit] General preferences

Four main preferences exist today:

• Some authors consider that text using double-spaces between sentences is more readable than text written with only one space after a period. The argument here is that readability is paramount and that wider spacing of sentences aids readability. This is a common argument,^{[70][71][72][73]} matches substantial and uncontradicted research showing that clear text unit groupings improve comprehension and that the enlarged intervening whitespaces do not distract readers (see Readability, above), and is consonant with the original purpose of typography's spacing rules: "Legibility is of more consequence than the most artistic arrangement".^[74]
• Some authors consider that proportionally spaced fonts have made double-spacing redundant, and that it should only be used in a monospaced (nonproportional) font.^[75] The argument here is that double-spacing was an attempt in a monospaced font to create the effect of proportional fonts' spaces, and that the ready availability now of proportional fonts renders a double-space redundant. It assumes that proportional fonts were not available before computer technology, which is incorrect: historically, monotype fonts were the exception not the norm, and a double-length space after sentences preceded monotype typewriters by several hundred years. It also addresses only unmodified ragged text, as the process of justification renders all whitespace proportional, both the user-entered spaces (simplistically) and the gaps between letters (sophisticatedly)—regardless of the typeface used, typeset spaces become proportional when justified. Even setting these restrictions to one side, this argument can be demonstrated to be logically false by either of two different observations, neither of which assume the need to speculate on historical typists' intentions:
  • A proportional font's spaces' width is not restricted to an em, and is nearly always narrower. However, it remains single-width. No matter how typeset, a proportional single-width space does not differentiate between the spacing created between words and the spacing created between sentences, even taking into account the whitespace vertically above the period. That is, standard proportional fonts' standard space offers no material visual distinction on printing or display between a word break and a sentence break. The typist wishing to more clearly distinguish a sentence break from a word break, or explicitly wishing to follow traditional typography's spacing rules, must double-space a proportional font just as a monotype font. Proportional fonts in and of themselves therefore offer no reason over monotype fonts not to double-space after sentences.
  • Monospaced periods are predominantly white-space due to the relatively insignificant size of the period itself within a fixed em width. Typewriter fonts historically center the period in the em-space, meaning less than an en space follows a period. Therefore single-spacing after periods in a monotype font results in a stretched space nearly half again larger than normal, effectively imitating the effect of a varied, but less than doubled, proportional font space. If a desire to imitate in a monospaced font the appearance of a proportional font were the only driver of typists' original style choices, single-spacing would have been universally adopted. It was not, therefore something else drove the English spacing standardization on double-spacing.
• Some authors (particularly professional designers or typographers) consider that double-spacing creates an unappealing appearance. The argument here is that appearance is the most important aspect of text.^[76][77][78]
• Some authors consider that best practice is dependent on the particular typeface being used. The argument here is that each typeface's particular characteristics affect its eventual presentation, and regard should be had to actual effect rather than to presumptive rules.^[79]

[edit] Style guides

French style guides continue to specify that sentences should be single-spaced, and that non-breaking spaces should separate text and most punctuation. French-Canadian style guides diverge slightly, still specifying single-spaced sentences but allowing that non-breaking spaces are not needed before question marks, exclamation marks, or semicolons.^[80] The French daily Libération uses French quotation marks without any spaces—it is very much the exception rather than the norm, but worth noting since it is quite influential.

Early English-language style guides such as Jacobi in the UK^[81][82] and MacKellar, Harpel, Bishop, and De Vinne in the USA^{[83][84][85][86]} specified that sentences should be em-spaced, and that words should be 1/3 em spaced (occasionally 1/2 em). This remained standard for quite some time. For example, MacKellar's The American Printer was the dominant style guide in the US at the time and ran to at least 17 editions between 1866 and 1893, and De Vinne's The Practice of Typography was the undisputed global authority on English-language typesetting style from 1901 until well past Dowding's first formal alternative spacing suggestion in the mid-1950s. Further, both the American and the UK style guides also specified that spaces should be inserted between punctuation and text. (It should be noted in passing that the MacKellar guide described these as hairspaces but itself used a much wider space than was then commonly regarded as a hairspace, apparently matching Jacobi's widely accepted 1890 standardization on the 1/5 em space.^[87])

The official USA government style guide of 1959 specifies that sentences should be em-spaced even when typeset, and defines a double-space as a synonym for an em-space:^[88]

To aid readability, an em quad (or double-space) is used at the end of a sentence. This applies to all types of composition, and includes Teletypesetter, reproduction, and other printing. Unless otherwise specified, this rule will apply.

Recently some widely-used American style guides, notably the Chicago Manual of Style, call for a single space after full stops and colons.^[89][90] In chapter 6 Punctuation section 3 Typographic and Aesthetic Considerations, for example, the Chicago Manual of Style states:

6.11 Space between sentences

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

The FAQ to the Chicago Manual of Style explicitly states that the "traditional American practice" is to double-space after colons and periods (without mentioning semicolons) but then states that "This practice is discouraged by the University of Chicago Press".^[91] Some authors have noted that, just as Noah Webster fundamentally altered American spelling, the Chicago Tribune was famous for its attempts to alter Americans' English usage, and the leading single-space style guide and the earliest documented example of the reversed usage of French spacing both come from Chicago; specifically: both are products of the University of Chicago Press.^[92][93]

[edit] Designers' style preferences

As noted above, in the late 20th century there has been a designer-led trend to assert that single-spaced sentences constitute good style. The reasons offered in support of this trend are of three forms: stylistic, reader-centric, and historical.

The stylistic reasoning asserts that single-spacing is good style because it is considered good style; that is, spacing is a purely design decision.

The reader-centric reasoning asserts that double-spacing is detrimental to readers. However, empirical research has unanimously found the opposite (see Readability, above).

The historical reasoning asserts that single-spacing is the historical norm and that double-spacing is a typewriter-driven anomaly. Examples include:

• Pain in the English's discussion of Spaces after Period:

This has been known for a thousand years. No typesetters used two spaces until Victorian times, when chaaper [sic] printing presses allowed people who didn't know what they were doing to start printing stuff. Even then, all the competent printers continued to use single spaces between sentences, and that has been true for the entire history of typesetting, from Guttenberg [sic] to the present.

• The Font Site's declaration of The Rules Of Type, citing Cavanaugh's Digital Type Design Guide:^[94]

If you grew up prior to the advent of desktop publishing, chances are you were taught to put two spaces after periods, question marks, exclamation marks, and colons. The rationale was that it is easier for the eye to distinguish sentences in this fashion. When using monospaced fonts (read: typewriter fonts), there might be some validity to this. But this only applied to documents created with a typewriter. Since the advent of the printing press in the 15th century, typesetters have never inserted two spaces after punctuation.

However, even ignoring historical style guides (cited above), historical examples of printing practice clearly show the opposite is the case. In general, double-spacing was the norm (see above), and, despite Morris's 19th century efforts, single-spacing today is a profit-driven artifact of late-20th century high-volume mass-production commercial printing.

Since empirical evidence contradicts both the reader-centric reasoning and the historical reasoning, the designer preference for single-spaced sentences rests solely on design choice.

[edit] Computer software

[edit] Overview

"You've got that backwards of course. If we didn't want two spaces after a full stop, we wouldn't need any of this nonsense."

— Guido van Rossum, creator of Python ^[95]

The widespread adoption of computer technology has introduced new tools and hence new cost-benefit tradeoffs, but has not changed the typographic fundamentals.

As noted in Microsoft's Character Design Standard (5 of 10): Space Characters for Latin 1: "In digital fonts there are only two kinds of space characters supported by most computers, the space and the no-break space." This means that moving to computers has not altered the situation caused by the typewriter: if the typer wishes to more clearly separate sentences, or to use the English spacing approximation of the standard typesetters' spacing rules, the lack of multiple-width spaces still requires use of multiple spaces on computers, just as on typewriters.

Some computer typesetting technologies abnegate the use of double-spacing (e.g., HTML, XML, SGML), whereas others encourage or create it (most notably TeX and LaTeX).

[edit] Text editors

Some computer text editors, such as Emacs and vi, originally relied on double-spacing to recognize sentence boundaries. By default, Emacs will not break a line at a single space preceded by a period, but this behaviour is configurable (with the option sentence-end-double-space). There are also functions to move the cursor an entire sentence forward or backward which rely on double-spaced sentences. The GNU Coding Standards still recommend using two spaces,^[96] to accommodate the default behavior of traditional text editors.

The optional Emacs mode LaTeX provides a toggling option French-LaTeX-mode which if set to French automatically inserts additional and correctly-breaking spaces around punctuation, but does not create double-spacing between sentences or after colons or semicolons.^[97][98]

With all standard editors and word processors, a global 'replace' operation easily converts double-spacing to single-spacing. However, the reverse operation is not as simple, because spaces that follow abbreviations would be expanded incorrectly.

[edit] Web browsers

Web browsers follow the HTML display specification and for programmers' convenience ignore runs of white space when displaying them.^[99][100] A long-standing criticism of the web, only partially addressed by CSS, is that it does not support typographers' design needs, although this criticism is not typically directed at just sentence spacing.

In order to force a web browser to display multiple spaces, a special character sequence (such as    for an en-space followed by a thin space,   for an em-space, or    for two successive spaces) must be used.^[101]

[edit] TeX

The canonical typesetting software TeX by Donald Knuth also treats input runs of whitespace as a single space, but uses a heuristic to recognize sentence endings and typesets these by default with double-spaces. Contrary to the relatively recent Americanism, Knuth uses the terms English spacing and American typewriter spacing to describe this: he named the TeX macro to disable the automatic enlarging of space after the end of a sentence \frenchspacing, whereas double-spacing is the default (or can be explicitly enabled with \nonfrenchspacing).

[edit] Microsoft Word

Microsoft Word similarly uses a heuristic to recognize sentence endings. It does not distinguish between single- and double-space sentence breaks, will allow the user to enter as many spaces as desired, and will display or print as many spaces as are entered. The early problem it had with inserting linebreaks between the two spaces of a double-spaced sentence break has been fixed since at least Word 97.

Microsoft also has a long history of explicitly supporting French spacing—if not French typesetting—through punctuation-related non-breaking spaces,^[102] though not always as well as some French users would like.^[103] Typists can manually enter non-breaking spaces in Microsoft Office with control-shift-space on a PC or option-space on a Mac, and in Word can trigger their automatic entry around quotation marks by specifying Language to be French (or a French variant) and enabling the "Replace as you type > 'Straight quotes' with 'Smart quotes'" option under the "Autoformat As You Type" tab in the "AutoCorrect" dialog box.

Microsoft appears to have introduced a further terminological variation by labelling some aspects of French spacing as French Punctuation—the term does not occur before Microsoft's usage, only appears in Microsoft-influenced spheres, and the specifics of Microsoft's own documents make it clear they are actually referring to spacing rules. For example, from the Microsoft Typographic Design manual's discussion of Punctuation Design Standards:^[104]

Language note : In French typographic usage the left pointing guillemet - guillemet ourvant [sic] [opening quotation mark] is followed by a non-breaking word space (espace mots insécable) and the right pointing guillemet - guillemet fermant [closing quotation mark] is preceded by a non-breaking word space. In Microsoft Word 97 the non-breaking space U+00A0 is automatically inserted when the French language is selected and a guillemet is typed. Some French typographers prefer to use a non-breaking thin space (espace fine insécable) with the guillemets.

[edit] Operating systems

Macintosh users can not choose space length but can enter breaking spaces or non-breaking spaces (option-space) in any program, allowing French spacing.

Microsoft Windows users and most unixes users can not choose space length either and are further restricted to only entering breaking spaces unless particular applications provide explicit French spacing support or an ability to enter non-breaking spaces.

[edit] Postscript fonts

Many Type 1 Postscript fonts do not have a non-breaking space in their character set. When the user tries to insert a non-breaking space using these fonts, the OS substitutes the default (breaking, single-width) space. This is a problem frequently encountered by French typists since they make heavy use of the non-breaking space.

[edit] Character encodings

ASCII and similar early character encodings provide only a single space, which is breaking and fixed-width (the particular width specified by each particular output font).

EBCDIC, although earlier than ASCII, provided a breaking fixed-width space (SP), a non-breaking fixed-width space (RSP: "Required SPace"), and an alternate-width non-breaking fixed-width space intended for use in numeric lists with fixed-width (but not necessarily em-width) digits (NSP: "Numeric SPace").

HTML and Unicode can both record runs of consecutive spaces, and also explicitly provide the capability to record multiple-width spaces and breaking and non-breaking spaces.

HTML provides 4 variations on space width and 1 fixed-width non-breaking space, which are: <space>, &emsp;, &ensp;, and &thinsp; (all breaking); and &nbsp; (non-breaking). Note that <space> will equal &emsp; in a typewriter font but will vary according to the font designer's specification in all other fonts, whether proportional or monotype. Note that the HTML standard also specifies Display behaviour, not just character encoding, so web browsers following the HTML standard will collapse multiple <space>s to a single <space>. Non-browser apps which use HTML encoding will not necessarily behave this way at display-time, e.g. later versions of MS Word.

Unicode provides 15 variations on space width and breakability, including: THIN SPACE &#8201; and NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE &#8239;.^{[105][106][107]}

Some confusion exists within the Unicode standard of how to apply these under various spacing rules:^[108]

The following demonstrates the effect of various approaches on your browser ...:

• No space before the exclamation mark!
• A no-break space before the exclamation mark !
• A THIN SPACE ( ) before the exclamation mark !
• A NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE ( ) before the exclamation mark !
• A small[-formatted] (?) no-break space before the exclamation mark !

It's even theoretically unclear what one should use. Version 3.0 of the Unicode standard said, in the discussion of language-based usage of quotation marks (p. 151–152): "Of these languages, at least French inserts space between text and quotation marks. In the French case, U+00A0 NO-BREAK SPACE can be used for the space that is enclosed between quotation mark and text; this choice helps line-breaking algorithms." Yet, Figure 6-1 after that statement displays «French» example with no spacing between the word and the quotation marks! As regards to THIN SPACE, it is a compatibility character, with the SPACE character as its compatibility decomposition. According to the Unicode line breaking rules, THIN SPACE, being in line breaking class BA, allows a line break after it, and this means that one would need something extra to prevent such line breaks.

[edit] Technology and approximations: input vs output

French spacing and English spacing arose as alternative available-technology-restricted approximations of a presentation ideal. Examples of other available-technology-restricted approximations of presentation ideals in computer design and typography include anti-aliasing and ClearType.

Following the original ideal (calligraphy), typesetting explicitly provided for a huge range of spacing options designed to maximize readability while still allowing visually attractive text. Gutenberg, for example, used up to 14 different widths for each letter and ligature and used an effectively unlimited range of space widths. This was wholly manual work however, taking a long time and requiring high skill. Since then, most of this readability-driven space variation has fallen out of use, initially for commercial reasons, recently reinforced by graphic-design style preference reasons.

The last two decades' digital DTP technology has brought a renaissance in cost-effective typesetting capability. There is no longer a material marginal cost associated with typesetting double-spaces, or even multiple-width spaces.

French spacing and English spacing in a typesetting environment can be viewed as either or both of: a substitute for full typesetting, and typists' input "hints" to typesetters' output; in both cases imitating and approximating at input time the results of traditional typesetting's standard and ideal output.^[109]

Technology has advanced since the invention of the typewriter. Current technology allows variable-width spaces to be recorded and to be displayed and printed. However, current text input technology remains equivalent to the typewriter. Even where input is not based on a keyboard, such as tablets or touch-sensitive PDAs, the input is transformed into a typewriter-equivalent text stream before being processed.^[110]

In order for users to enter typesetter-emulating text without resorting to approximations such as French spacing or English spacing, while still allowing any later typesetter full control over spacing design decisions, text entry technology must allow at least the following spaces to be easily entered by untrained users, including text-entry software inferring them^{[111][112][113]} from predefined typographic standards on input just as TeX infers them on output:

• non-breaking short spaces (thin spaces)
• non-breaking normal spaces (thick spaces)
• breaking normal spaces (thick spaces)
• breaking long spaces (em spaces)

[edit] Related spacing rules

Many Asian spacing rules for alphabetized printing distinguish between sentences which are closely related and those which are less closely related: an intra-concept inter-sentence space differs from an inter-concept inter-sentence space. The former is represented by a small vertically-(x-)centred circle ("◦"), the latter by a normal Western space. When printed, inter-concept inter-sentence spaces are often double-spaced.

Tibetan spacing rules are more complex, based on syllable-driven "phrases" rather than on words. Inter-word spaces are not used, but inter-syllable characters and inter-phrase spaces are used. When printed, Tibetan (and hence Bhutanese etc.) sentences are separated by a doubled inter-phrase space.^[114][115]

[edit] See also

• Kerning and Leading
• Punctuation in French

[edit] External links

• The American Declaration of Independence (4 July 1776)
• PHP SmartyPants Typographer: PHP MarkDown extension inserting key French spacing non-breaking spaces into entered text
• A "Silesian Vocational and Technical" (1960) training video for Linotype machines, notable for its clarity regarding the technology's strengths and limitations, and the full explanation of the consequent spacing practice
• Plenken (verb-inflected pun on the noun Plenk: (German) blank): the German internet coinage for inappropriately inserting breaking spaces; and Klempen: Plenk's constructed (K<–>P) near-antonym coined to describe eliding spaces after punctuation marks
• A List Apart: Sheerin, Peter K. (2001) The Trouble With EM ’n EN (and Other Shady Characters)
• Typophile forum discussion of Double-spacing after periods
• Writers Block (1997) Writing Tips — Spacing (1) & Spacing (2)
• Discussion of double-spacing, French spacing, and English spacing, in the context of Tablet (untyped) input: Two spaces after period?
• Microsoft's Character design standards (5 of 10): Space Characters for Latin 1—notes on French typesetting in "Other space characters" section

[edit] References