If i could wave a magic wand and teach everybody one thing “computers are not typewriters; stop putting two spaces after terminal punctuation as if it were one of the commandments” would be high on the list.  I want to know why it is, that of all the boneheaded rules to become universal in the world of Western typography, the rule of “two spaces after a period” is the one everybody follows as if it were the one absolute truth of existence.

So i’ll put the moral of this story right up front: unless you are typing on an Olympia SG-1 or equivalent, stop hitting two spaces after a period or other terminal punctuation.

How did this all start? As the featured graphic demonstrates, in the early days of typesetting and typewriters letter shapes (glyphs) all occupied the same (or nearly the same) horizontal space. Thus the problem of how to delineate sentence breaks arose and consumed the minds of designers for generations. The “solution” that took over the world remains a classic example of buck-passing. “Just hit two spaces after a full stop… why complicate matters?”

But this really should come as no surprise, after all the ludicrous “QWERTY” keyboard we all take for granted was developed specifically to slow typists down in order for the hammers to clear the gate. Yes, thank the industrial engineers of yore for this pathetic tool still in widespread use and the cause of numerous wrist and forearm injuries.

So, you can see why i tend to get pissy when faced with intransigent users who insist “two spaces was what i was taught!” and expect me to accept that rationale as holy writ.

Typewriter:

Computer (even a nasty windoze computer):