While doom scrolling the other day on Instagram, a guy popped up in my feed who I’d never seen before and proceeded to insist to the Instagram community that single spacing after periods was “fucking bullshit.”
This grabbed my attention immediately because what he was saying flew in the face of the most basic rule in typography I learned way back in the summer of 1977. It would also become one of the first things my graphic design students would learn in the first semester of their first year—it was that basic.
Like anyone, I can get pretty worked up when it comes to politics and other things that divide our country. But, there are a few other topics that will rub me the wrong way even if they lack the attention of the general public—bad typographic advice is certainly one of them.
Here’s the transcript of his post on two-spaces vs. one-space…
“When you type a sentence and you put a period… I’m being told that you can only have one space afterwards. And that’s fucking bullshit, and I’m tired of it because you put two spaces after a sentence. White space on a paper attracts your eye. Look at any Apple ad that you have and all you see is one image, right? It is two spaces. It’s designed for the eyeball and I’m tired (again he’s tired) of people saying only one space. So, if you see me in the courthouse, don’t fucking come and talk to me about one space—cause it’s two.”
And there you have it—no exceptions—just pure fact according to mild-mannered criminal defense lawyer Jeremy Rosenthal who apparently moonlights as a graphic designer or typographer given his extensive knowledge on spacing after sentences. In this age of Trump where “my loud opinion is as good as your facts,” his rant is spot on. Imagine, a lawyer spouting off about typography as if he’s some kind of expert or authority on the subject. Better yet is the pure, unadulterated stupidity as he doesn’t even cite any sources to back-up his moronic claim, just a blind decree, “…don’t fucking come and talk to me about one space… cause it’s two!”
Imagine how bankrupt Rosenthal’s working vocabulary must be when it comes to typography—using secretarial language like “linespacing” for leading, “three-dots” for em leaders, and likely doesn’t know the difference between a hyphen and an en-dash.
Is this what happens when one becomes a lawyer… you suddenly think you’re an expert on anything beyond the practice of law? For God’s sake, Jeremy, you’re out of order!
Someone should send his tirade on spacing after sentences to whatever law school he attended. My bet is they won’t be surprised. I can almost hear one of his profs saying something like, “Yeah, that’s old Jeremy alright… shoot first and ask questions later. That’s a true testament that he wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box.”
There are certain things we do (whether deliberate or unaware) that illustrate to the world that we are undoubtedly stupid—wearing a red MAGA hat surely comes to mind. But there are other discernible means of accomplishing this too—Rosenthal’s rant here is definitely one of them.
Further, is this how he operates in the courtroom too… just goes off spouting diarrhea all over the courtroom without presenting any evidence backing his claims?” All I could think about in watching his post was, “What a fucking idiot. I pity the parties he represents in court.”
Basic Typography 101
I never thought I’d find myself fighting this fight again. After 30-plus years of covering this basic typographic practice in the classroom every year, here I am one last time trying to silence another clueless moron who believes they are an authority on the subject. Fuck me.
So, one last time—as a professional and educator in graphic design, prepress, and print—I’m going to clear the air on this subject. I hope to never speak of this again.
I learned in a high school typing class my sophomore year (1975-1976) that two spaces followed all sentences. I never asked why that was and simply followed the rule. This class met everyday for one hour and we only worked on manual typewriters. During my junior and senior years, I was enrolled in a vocational graphic arts program, and as a result became curious about design, publishing, and typography. During the summer between those two years, I found my first job in the field working as a typesetter for a weekly newspaper (The Signal of Canal Fulton, Ohio) on a Compugraphic Jr phototypesetting system—the same system used in our high school graphics program. On day one at The Signal, I was instructed, “No double spacing after sentences.” Like that typing class, I never ask why this was.
Reporters in our newsroom would type up their stories/manuscripts on regular typewriters and upon editing, the manuscripts would be sent up to composition where I would rekey each story into our phototypesetting system. Of course this rekeying of any given manuscript opened me up to possible typographic errors, but it also allowed me to edit out the various typewriter practices that weren’t suitable for publishing—omitting two spaces after sentences was one of them.
It was only in college that started learning the basic dos and don’ts of typography, and more importantly, the rationale behind them.
When the typewriter came on the scene in the early 1900s, many different practices were introduced that addressed the device’s poverty of characters (think the limited number of key strikers that crash against the ink ribbon and transfer the mark onto the paper). Many of the characters that we take for granted on our PCs were impossible to produce on a typewriter such as choosing between roman, boldface, italic, and bold italic. There were no options for real quotes, apostrophes, or prime marks—just the straight, up and down prime marks (that were used interchangeably as quotation marks and apostrophes, often called “straight quotes”). Other characters unavailable on a typewriter were real fractions, dashes, diacritical indicators, etc. So, the practice of double spacing after sentences was simply another way of accommodating the limitations of the typewriter, such as—and here’s the important part—the generation of monospaced characters, where every character takes up the same amount of space (even a period or space takes up the same width as a capital/uppercase W or M).
In an effort to break up the monotony of monospaced characters, double spacing following a sentence was introduced to improve the “readability” of the copy (look that definition up, there’s more to it than you think). These typewriter practices were very appropriate for the limited-characters the device could generate, but when the typewriter was phased out, sadly some of these practices were carried over to the PC—in particular desktop publishing. But the PC was never about emulating the typewriter even if it had the same keyboard layout. Contrary to that the PC offered all of the features that had always been available in traditional and modern typesetting systems, but at a cost that many could afford. When tools/equipment of any profession become democratized like this, there is always the chance that training and knowledge of the processes are ignored or simply overlooked. The same thing happened with plumbing when PVC was introduced. So, anyone could be a plumber as long as they had a hack saw and glue (so we thought). The same is true in owning a PC and having access to professional software (fonts included). Just because one has the tools doesn’t make one a publisher or graphic designer, although that is the route that many have taken. In the transition from typewriters to PCs, many people have assumed that the lessons they learned on a typewriter were just as valid on the PC. However, limiting typography to the practices originating from a typewriter is akin to limiting architecture to only using cinder blocks.
When it comes to word spacing (including after sentences) typesetting systems used for printing and publishing, going back to hand setting individual metal characters (see diagram above), have always used a 3-em space between words and after sentences because the typefaces available were elegant and smart in their designs, and more importantly were proportionally spaced (google that). Look closely at any publication worth its salt, you won’t see double spacing after sentences because it isn’t needed. Also worth noting is that double spacing between sentences can hobble some justification if it falls at the end of a line.
Most don’t know this, but the holy 3-em space is what you always get when you hit the spacebar on your PC. Type designers and foundries would surely protest violently if they knew typewriter practices were being used on their proportionally-spaced type designs. Most fonts on PCs are proportionally spaced fonts—Times Roman, Helvetica, Arial, Garamond, etc. But, there are a few monospaced fonts available on a PC as well. The font Courier is the most common. So, as I would tell my students, if you use Courier (or some other monospaced font), by all means double space after sentences. Otherwise, it’s single spacing for everything else—it always has been!
A Dimwitted Rebellion
The only exceptions to these tried-and-true typography standards appear to come from various unrelated disciplines that have adopted conflicting standards such as double spacing after sentences no matter what kind of font is used—think English/grammar folk, or the law community as in the case of Attorney Rosenthal. Many of those who defend these “commandeered rules” will say things like, “It just looks better and is easier to read,” or “that’s how I was taught.” But I have yet to meet up with anyone who can cite any legitimate, and widely accepted research that defends their stance.
The irony in all of this is that we now have this incredible system of hardware and software in front of us that can be transformed into a powerful publishing tool. And despite all that, there are some of us who treat it as if it’s still a typewriter. These typographical luddites lack any sense of curiosity or imagination about how today’s PCs can do so much more while failing to circumvent those old practices that were derived from the shortcomings of their early-20th Century typewriters. This is akin to having a Formula One car and only using it to go to the market to get groceries.
I have no push-back for these roped-off cases of bad typography practices in specific professions. If they want to be isolationist in their dumbed-down typographical practices, I say, “live and let live.” But, what I do have a problem with is when some, let’s say, jackass lawyer, with no background in typography, publishing, or graphic design foolishly declares that double spacing after sentences is some kind of universal standard.
There’s a great deal of information that one can easily find on this subject if they’ve made it to this far and aren’t convinced or just want to know more. That’s admirable or just downright crazy—maybe both. Given that I’ve been so outspoken on this topic for years, perhaps there is an abbreviated way to say all this so that it fits on my tombstone. I’m open to suggestions.