Can We Talk About the Double Space After a Period?

I still see this clash of the punctuation titans everywhere. As a dutiful member of Gen X—the crowd who pioneered transitioning from manual typewriters to word processors, DOS, Apple, Windows 3.1, and the internet—I’d love to tell you where I stand on this matter. Even though, I know, there are some things we just shouldn’t talk about in mixed company: politics, religion, and, yes, double spacing after the period.

Where Do I Stand?

First, let me share a story. Many years ago, before the fissure between the two punctuation camps so pronounced from one generation to the next, I was workshopping with a writing group, many of whom were considerably younger than me. We’d do read reviews and mark up each other’s stories with plot recommendations and other important constructive criticism. If you’ve been in a good writing group, you’ve seen the benefits of second eyes on your work. But with this group, I regularly received comments like “I started to fall asleep two paragraphs in” or “I don’t understand this sentence.” I was struggling to develop my plot points while they were falling asleep and not offering much in the way of feedback. I genuinely offered developmental advice and they were offering snarky comments. My needs were ignored. And my self-esteem was in the garbage.

They just weren’t taking the time to actually read and review. Was my work that bad? Was I expecting too much from a younger group (I didn’t think so at the time; they were an intelligent and mature mix, and all our works were being submitted anonymously).

Prior to the meeting in question, I had submitted the bare bones of a new story to the group; it wasn’t fleshed out because (supposedly) we were all on our first drafts. I had listed my struggles, and when I received my copies back from being workshopped, I was thrilled to see all kinds of notes and markups on one. Hooray!

But at closer inspection, my face fell. The notes and markups were all about my spacing after the period! I had to throw hands. I wasn’t having any of it. If there is one thing that I’ll stick to my guns about, it’s this:

There should be only one space after the period. Full stop.

Why Did We Start Double Spacing Anyway?

Double spacing was implemented during the age of typewriters to assist with readability. Original type fonts, similar to Courier New, were monospaced, and the double space after the period kept the copy from appearing as a ginormous block of text.

But, like I said previously, Gen X can be credited for the word processor, computers, and such; and all that newfangled technology led to new fonts that are proportionally spaced. So now the automatic formatting renders double spacing after the period irrelevant. Even with a single space after the period, the beginning of the next sentence is still easily recognizable.

So, to have this young whippersnapper jump straight into copyediting without offering a speck of feedback about the story development itself? And then to call me out for properly formatting my punctuation? “You need to double space here, here, and here.” “Double spacing helps the story along.”

There was a lesson here for me. I’d like to say I stuck it out with that group, but that was really the last straw. I later found a like-minded group of older writers who also had ditched the double-space rule. And most importantly, they provided actual constructive read reviews equivalent to what I offered. All thanks to the double-space rule I just couldn’t bring myself to follow.