Conquer Club

In the beginning, the rules of the space bar were simple. Two spaces after each period. Every time. Easy.

That made sense in the age of the typewriter. Letters of uniform width looked cramped without extra space after the period. Typists learned not to do it.

But then, at the end of the 20th century, the typewriter gave way to the word processor, and the computer, and modern variable-width fonts. And the world divided.

Some insisted on keeping the two-space rule. They couldn't get used to seeing just one space after a period. It simply looked wrong.

Some said this was blasphemy. The designers of modern fonts had built the perfect amount of spacing, they said. Anything more than a single space between sentences was too much.

And so the rules of typography fell into chaos. “Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong,” Farhad Manjoo wrote in Slate in 2011. “You can have my double space when you pry it from my cold, dead hands,” Megan McArdle wrote in the Atlantic the same year. (And yes, she double-spaced it.)

So the researchers, Rebecca L. Johnson, Becky Bui and Lindsay L. Schmitt, rounded up 60 students and some eye-tracking equipment, and set out to heal the divide.

First, they put the students in front of computers and dictated a short paragraph, to see how many spaces they naturally used. Turns out, 21 of the 60 were “two-spacers,” and the rest typed with close-spaced sentences that would have horrified the Founding Fathers.

The researchers then clamped each student's head into place, and used an Eyelink 1000 to record where they looked as they silently read 20 paragraphs. The paragraphs were written in various styles: one-spaced, two-spaced, and strange combinations like two spaces after commas, but only one after periods. And vice versa, too.

And the verdict was: two spaces after the period is better. It makes reading slightly easier. Congratulations, Yale University professor Nicholas A. Christakis. Sorry, Lifehacker.

jonesthecurl wrote:Never heard of this nonsense until I came to the US. One space. Why more?

HitRed wrote:Large number in Europe don't use the ",". Maybe like the single space they are saving "ink" or time. I found the "," helps a lot reading numbers.

100,000
Americans include the ","

100 000
Europeans just leave the space open.

Maybe someone knows more on this.

HitRed

Neoteny wrote:I learned two-space typing in school and used it egregiously when padding pages for essays, but once length stopped mattering I abandoned the double space as papers just look better without the artificial inflation and anyone who continues using two spaces after a period post-grade school is a monster.

The aesthetics is worth the 2% speed decrease or whatever these hacks decided was significant enough to publish.

DoomYoshi wrote:

HitRed wrote:Large number in Europe don't use the ",". Maybe like the single space they are saving "ink" or time. I found the "," helps a lot reading numbers.

100,000
Americans include the ","

100 000
Europeans just leave the space open.

Maybe someone knows more on this.

HitRed

Its because in French a comma means decimal. Sort of like a Germany, 7 doesn't mean 7 but you have to draw a line through it. That's how you can tell someone is a Nazi since they only do that in the countries with Polish Death Camps, like Poland, Russia, Poland, Hungary etc.

Neoteny wrote:Image is shit because I have a broken camera lens.



Eh, I've definitely seen worse.

Neoteny wrote:I learned two-space typing in school and used it egregiously when padding pages for essays, but once length stopped mattering I abandoned the double space as papers just look better without the artificial inflation and anyone who continues using two spaces after a period post-grade school is a monster.

The aesthetics is worth the 2% speed decrease or whatever these hacks decided was significant enough to publish.

TA1LGUNN3R wrote:I wonder how many single-space shitheads like cramped surroundings? Like, is your desk or work area all cluttered?

Neo, does your lab bench resemble a janitor's storeroom?

mrswdk wrote:Have you heard of computers? They're a great way of storing all your notes and articles in one place, rather than having to scatter them all around you like a cliche scene from a murder mystery TV programme.

nietzsche wrote:

mrswdk wrote:Have you heard of computers? They're a great way of storing all your notes and articles in one place, rather than having to scatter them all around you like a cliche scene from a murder mystery TV programme.

it' just not the same. i bet you're one of those idiots that took notes in class on a laptop. it's not the same..