Half the space
Mac Tip #263/04-Oct-2006
In the old days, when people used typewriters, type was monospaced: every key was the same width, so every letter used the same amount of space on the page.
Monospaced font vs proportional.
The screenshot shows a column of letters in 18 point Times, against the same text in the monospaced 18 point Monaco. The screenshot has been reduced in size — 18 points is larger than it appears here. [Click the thumbnail for a larger version.
You can easily see that in Times the letter i uses much less space than an m. In Monaco, an i, or even a space, is exactly as wide as the letter m.
In English we like to have a little extra space after a fullstop, to help us know where one sentence ends and another begins. Typists were taught to press the spacebar twice after a fullstop to create that extra space. On a typewriter, pressing the spacebar twice creates a larger space.
But then the wordprocessor came along and the letters in most fonts were created to be elastic, or ‘proportional’. Times, a commonly used font, is a good example. In screenshot 1 you can see that in Times each letter uses only as much space as it needs, and no more. A letter i is narrow, while the letter m is wide.
So, you might think that to create some extra space after a fullstop you’d have to press the spacebar loads of times, but in fact the opposite is true. The rule of typing into a wordprocessor is to only ever press the spacebar once. You use one single space after a fullstop, between words, or anywhere else spaces are required.
The reason is that typewriter intelligence was external: it resided in the human being pressing the keys. The typist figured out how often to press the spacebar. The typist could also easily work out how many spaces were required because one space was exactly as wide an one i or one m.
Wordprocessors have built-in smarts and letter widths are flexible. The software knows about creating extra space after a fullstop and it can stretch a space character to be as wide or as narrow as needed for any given purpose.
If the typist presses the spacebar extra times, all they do is confuse the software and often make their text harder to read.
After a fullstop type one, and only one, space.
Next week: Using the Tab key.
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