Monday, May 07, 2018

One Space Or Two After A Period?

One of my favorite trolls once tried to insult me by calling me old because I insist on the convention, even when using a computer, of putting two spaces after a period rather than the more "modern" one space.  Turns out that science! (so lefties can't challenge it) shows that two spaces make reading easier:
Enter three psychology researchers from Skidmore College, who decided it's time for modern science to sort this out once and for all.

“Professionals and amateurs in a variety of fields have passionately argued for either one or two spaces following this punctuation mark,” they wrote in a paper published last week in the journal Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics...

And the verdict was: two spaces after the period is better. It makes reading slightly easier...

The major reason to use two spaces, the researchers wrote, was to make the reading process smoother, not faster. Everyone tended to spend fewer milliseconds staring at periods when a little extra blank space followed it.

(Putting two spaces after a comma, if you're wondering, slowed down reading speed, so don't do that.)

The study's authors concluded that two-spacers in the digital age actually have science on their side, and more research should be done to “investigate why reading is facilitated when periods are followed by two spaces.”
Notice that this is from the Washington Post--so again, lefties can't challenge it.

And troll?  I was right.  Again.  Back to your drinking.

3 comments:

Jamie said...

I guess that makes me old as well since I also type two spaces after a period. I get a bit angry when some of the autocorrect features try to undo it.

How do you feel about the Oxford comma?

Darren said...

For the sake of clarity as well as appearance, I use the Oxford comma.

In another nod to my British heritage, I put punctuation outside of quote marks if it doesn't naturally belong inside them.

Auntie Ann said...

Most HTML on the web, like this post here, doesn't recognize double spaces (unless you code them with the "& nbsp ;" (no spaces in the actual key) code.