Microsoft Word now flags double spaces after full stops as errors

[Arthur]

Like they should be! Microsoft should have added the feature to Word over 25 years ago.

 

Source: The Verge

 

Microsoft has settled the great space debate, and sided with everyone who believes one space after a period is correct, not two. The software giant has started to update Microsoft Word to highlight two spaces after a period (a full stop for you Brits) as an error, and to offer a correction to one space. Microsoft recently started testing this change with the desktop version of Word, offering suggestions through the Editor capabilities of the app.

 

If you’re still (strangely) on the two-spacer side, you will be able to ignore the suggestion. The Editor feature in Word allows users to ignore the suggestion once, make the change to one space, or turn off the writing-style suggestion. We understand Microsoft has been testing the feature change recently and it will roll out to everyone using the desktop version of Word soon. Feedback to the change has been overwhelmingly positive.

 

“As the crux of the great spacing debate, we know this is a stylistic choice that may not be the preference for all writers, which is why we continue to test with users and enable these suggestions to be easily accepted, ignored, or flat out dismissed in Editor,” says Kirk Gregersen, partner director of program management at Microsoft, in a statement to The Verge.

 

Much of the debate around one space or two has been fueled by the halcyon days of the typewriter. Typewriters used monospaced fonts to allocate the same amount of horizontal spacing to every character. Narrow characters like “i” got the same amount of space as “m,” so the extra space after the “.” was needed to make it more apparent that sentences had ended. Word and many other similar apps make fonts proportional, so two spaces is no longer necessary.

 

That hasn’t stopped the battle over one space or two from raging on for decades, however. A study on the hotly contested issue supposedly handed the victory to the two-spacers back in 2018, but many questioned the research and it clearly wasn’t enough to convince Microsoft. Expect to see the new changes in Word roll out to everyone in the coming months. Congratulations, fellow one-spacers.

 

Hopefully this will go some way to help prevent old teachers from passing their bad typing habits down to children.

[Protec]

I actually got told to put 2 spaces after the full stop by the teacher when I went to school. I knew it was wrong so never have and never will!

[elsiegee40]

Actually, this was how typists were taught to type. Possibly, they still are.

 

I was told this by both my mother and the secretary at my last school.

 

Two spaces after a full stop and one after any other punctuation mark. I can see an awful lot of annoyed secretaries complaining about this.

[Protec]

Google doesn't seem to be much help. Results which are complete polar opposites.

[Arthur]

Actually, this was how typists were taught to type. Possibly, they still are.

I can understand typists doing this in the past with actual typewriters, but why did they continue to be taught to use double spaces after the switch to PCs and word processors (1980s onwards)? It doesn't make any sense.

 

Results which are complete polar opposites.

The top one is incorrect. We'll have to tell Google.

 

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/04/25/word-two-spaces

 

The two-spaces thing has been a "debate" only in the way that wondering if the earth is round, or if man landed on the moon, or if you should smash up a couple of cherries and orange wedges while mixing an Old Fashioned, have ever been debates. One side has all the experts in agreement; the other side is wrong. Go look at a few professionally-typeset books — every single sentence on every page in every book has one space after the period.

 

If you have the double-space habit as a typist, you shouldn’t worry about it. Just go ahead and double-space and trust your software to do the right thing — either replacing your double spaces with a single space as you type or when you publish. Web browsers, for example, will do all do the right thing. Most die-hard double-spacers don’t seem to know this, but from the get-go, HTML specifies collapsing runs of multiple spaces into a single space. You can type three or four spaces after each sentence if you want, but web browsers are going to render them as a single space. When you do see two spaces after a period on a webpage, the space-space sequence has been transmogrified into a non-breaking space ( ) followed by a normal space — a sure sign of typographically ignorant software somewhere in the publishing chain.

[jmak]

I was a double spacer having followed the Pitman typing course - on a computer [emoji2357]

 

Of course I now double space at the end of most sentences - and Google turns it into a full stop and a single space.

 

I had a boss who endlessly put double spaces in the middle of sentences. Type some words, press space, stop and think, press space and start typing again. First step on any proof reading was find "double space" and replace with "single space". Usually had to be run three or four times to catch all of them. That and character limits on SMS messages was what finally converted me, but it's a hard habit to break.

[Protec]

I considered going on a typing course but ended up teaching myself to touch type over the years. 102wpm is my best.