I first learned about this during the 1990s while reading the book, *The Mac is Not a Typewriter*, and it has stuck ever since. Nearly 30 years later I am still surprised this is a hot topic, though it seems most people who add double spaces between sentences know they shouldn't, but still do out of habit. People will go through great lengths to get that extra space back even when technology tries to guide them otherwise. Web browsers, for example, ignore additional spaces when rendering text unless special non-breaking spaces are added (` `). The iPhone introduced a behavior that has been widely adopted by other software and devices: quickly pressing the spacebar twice inserts a period followed by a *single* space, resulting in a single space between sentences. This shortcut leveraged a familiar interaction to insert the correct spacing between sentences, but it also conditions us to continue pressing that spacebar twice between sentences. In 2020, Microsoft even updated [[Microsoft Word]] to flag double spaces between sentences as an error. [^theverge] [^theverge]: [Microsoft Word now flags two spaces after a period as an error - The Verge](https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/24/21234170/microsoft-word-two-spaces-period-error-correction-great-space-debate) by [[Tom Warren]] ## Related - [[Underlined text was used to indicate the final piece should be typeset with italics]] --- ## Reference [One space between sentences | Typography for Lawyers](https://typographyforlawyers.com/one-space-between-sentences.html)