Microsoft Word will be enabling a long sought correction in the spacing of sentences that allowed double spaces after a full stop.?
With the practice being deemed wrong in modern day typing, the correction will be put to effect in the word processing application after almost 75 years of it being rendered unnecessary.
Typing a double space after a full stop was a practice followed since the time of typewriters wherein the 'monospaced' fonts were used. Among the equal-width characters, double spaces were used to better highlight a sentence ending.
The practice was then rendered moot with the advent of proportional-spacing typewriters in 1944. Following this, most of the style guides that came after did not follow double spacing breaks.
Surprisingly, Microsoft Word allowed the use of double spacing to date without displaying any error. The word processing application has now begun rolling out a software update that marks such double spacing as a formatting error with a blue wavy line.
Some of the Microsoft Word users that have received the update have started tweeting about it, believing the move to be a win for the ¡®one-spacers¡¯.
It should, however, be noted that those still following the practice will still be able to do so on Microsoft Word. Any time the warning pops up, users can simply chose to ignore the error for all future iterations.
Microsoft seems to be the last one to officially consider the double spacing as an error. Typographic authorities have been following the practice of one space after every sentence-end for quite some time now. This includes prominent style guides like the APA, PA, the US Government and the Chicago Manual of Style, as per a report.
The one-spacing comes with its own advantages too. Now that almost all the fonts incorporate proportional-spacing, double spaces are considered to be a waste of time, paper and a potential disruption of readability.