How many spaces after a punctuation mark?

I have never heard of using more than one space after punctuation mark in any language, and look like I'm knowledgeable in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Dutch.

 

For print media, 2 spaces is still the norm. Just pick up a book from any top publishing house, and you can tell. It's 2 spaces. For digital media, 1 space is the norm, because html defaults to one space. Good luck!

 

Thanks for clarification, and confirming my belief regarding IBM composer machines and printed guidelines attached to them explaining that there was a typeface element with long bar,and en and em dashes instead of using double hyphens like some people use in online publishing nowadays.

 

This thread now has me paranoid about how many spaces I'm putting after periods. I'm looking twice now at everything I type to see if I'm typing one space or two. lol. They say it takes 21 days to make a habit. Hopefully I won't be OCD about spaces for the next 3 weeks.

 

Ah, so that's why ex-girlfriends keep coming by for a "visit."

 

Modern day allows and promotes single space.

Again it really depends country to country. In India, there was never a double space promotion anyhow.
It was always single splace. The Double Space sounds like a United States/UK "unique" concept

 

LOL

Maxine --- I'm writing for a newspaper but we're always told to use one space after a punctuation mark. I don't know...perhaps because of the font that our layout artist uses?

 

I found an interesting reference book:

The American Heritage® Book of English Usage.
A Practical and Authoritative Guide to Contemporary English. 1996.
URL: bartleby.com/64/index.html

However it says nothing about those two spaces that have been discussed here so it must be specific to teaching received.

 

One of my current employers insists on double spaces after full stops, it is just feels sooo unnatural :/

 

I go one. Two isn't uncommon either though.

 

When this happens, I usually just follow what the client insists on. Have to everything to please the paying customer.

 

I was also taught to put two spaces after a period, question mark, or colon.

 

I never know of two spaces after every punctuation mark.

 

In early school years i was taught to put 2 spaces after any ending punctuation mark (question mark, exclamation mark, period)... But i have now adapted to digital media and use one space. I feel like 2 spaces is awkward and suggests and abnormally long pause when reading.

-Noah

 

One space after any kind of punctuation. That was an imba question neway

 

There certainly seems to be varied opinions on the subject. My opinion is that a single space is proper for web content. I have seen several softwares that default to double space though.

 

Wow, this simply question make me feel old school, since I fall in with the bunch that were taught to use 2 in high school.

 

Remember that in English there are often no "official" rules about a lot of things, it's a matter of house style. So you might like to try to dig out the stylesheets for some major media organisations. Or just look at a few major newspapers or other publications, or check out http://www.docstyles.com. I think they will back what has been said here by most, that double spaces were insisted on earlier (that's what I was taught at school in the 80s) but that they have been ditched now.

Though for example, the MLA stylesheet says, "Concluding punctuation (a question mark, exclamation point, or period) may be followed by one or two spaces as long as you are consistent throughout your text." Ho hum...

 

I recently took a letterpress printing class and when setting type we had to place a 1em space after the period, which equated to the width of 1 letter M which is slightly larger than a space but not as big as 2 spaces. this is the norm for the old school ways, but you could not get a 1em space on a typewriter so the 2 spaces was used instead, today properly coded word processors should automatically place the 1em space when you hit the . and then spacebar

 

mesach --- that's very interesting! I've never been taught the "1em" norm even though I had a typing class back in high school.

victorsinclair --- I know, I myself didn't expect that my simple question would draw a lot of interest

By the way, I haven't had the chance to thank whoever it was who gave me a +rep for my thread Thanks whoever you are