It wasn’t until I was well into my career that I noticed something very curious about documentation I worked on with others. Some people I worked with on projects, added an extra space after the period of a sentence. I saw this in Word documents, emails, and PowerPoints.
So I would write this something like this
“This policy is applicable to everyone. Any exceptions to this must be notated.”
But I found some people would send documents to me and it would look like this
“This policy is applicable to everyone. Any exceptions to this must be notated.”
I was confused. Why would we eat up so much more space on a page when one space would do? And why was it just some people and not all people who typed like this.
After some research I learned that many people who learned to type on a conventional typewriter were taught to add double spacing. But this was as a result of the inability for the mechanical typewriter to create proportional spacing. With the advent of the computer though, documents could now include the appropriate spacing without requiring a double space. So which is correct? According to the American Psychological Association (APA), the one space is correct. Learn more about the history of this fascinating topic on this Wikipedia page.
But, don’t despair if you’re a two-spacer OR if you continue to receive documents from a two-spacers, below are tips on handling both.
Two-spacers, even if Microsoft Word doesn’t agree with you, there is a way to update your setting to accept your double space, so you aren’t called out with the annoying red squiggles. Open Word, click on File, Options, Proofing, then scroll down until you see Grammar& Refinements, then scroll down to the Punctuation Conventions. From there you can select your preference to two spaces.
And if you’re one of those people who continues to get the double spaced documents and you want to avoid an awkward grammar interaction, then use this handy trick to remove all the double spaces before you submit that document. Go to Replace and Find “. “, replace with one space.
