Recently I’ve had a problem composing documents. I always put two spaces after a full stop but LibreOffice seems to ignore the second. This seems to happen anywhere I want to put extra spaces. I’ve looked through the options and can’t see anything obvious.
Version info:
Version: 5.1.6.2
Build ID: 1:5.1.6~rc2-0ubuntu1~xenial2
CPU Threads: 4; OS Version: Linux 4.4; UI Render: default;
Locale: en-GB (en_GB.UTF-8); Calc: group
No offence intended, but this usage was in effect in the mechanical typewriter era and is still current in README-like .txt file. LO and other document application allow now to adhere to traditional typographic rules. Double spaces may have adverse effects when justification is enabled (not evenly distributing extra spacing) and should be avoided IMHO.
As a designer and typographer I fully second the first comment. There is and was never the need for double spaces. Further, In my part of the European mainland, it was never done … or abandoned over 50 years ago.
Double spaces will come back to bite you in some form.
As a reader of writing, I always put two spaces after a full stop, simply because it makes it easier to read. Why make writing more difficult to read ? See … I always put a space before a question mark. If I write phone numbers or any other series of number / characters, I always split them into groups of 3. If I use a slash to separate two words, it always has a space either side etc. Why make life more difficult rather than easier ?
You’re wrong putting a space before punctuation like ? ! or ; because justification may push punctuation to next line. Typographic rules say that this punctuation must be kept with previous word. Instead, you should use a “non-breaking space”. Since the traditional NBSP U+00A0 is too wide for that, you should prefer NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE U+202F. The same holds for number which must not be split across line; they may be debated for phone “ids” which are not arithmetic numbers.
There are many spaces in Generl Punctuation section of Unicode at U+2000 but not all have the non-breaking property.
With regard to full stop space-after, I have not presently my book on typographic rules at hand to check. In case there is some usage about it, it should be handled by the word processor to enlarge said space, not by the author (it’s a matter of not causing writing to be more difficult than necessary). Personally, I don’t like extra space after full-stop. It makes me feel …
… feel a break in the discourse, just like an em-dash would introduce a parenthetical sentence.
As usual, all this is a matter of personal taste, but, beware, in Western langages, ordinary spaces are placeholders freely available to the word processor for tricks like line breaks or justification. Adding redundant ones will bite you sooner or later (see @HenkC.Meerhof’s comment).
Thanks for all the comments. I’ve never heard of the two spaces rule being abandoned although many don’t know about it. With one space, it looks weird. I do hope they don’t start writing applications that malfunction with double spaces. As for stretch justification, as long as the spaces are all stretched the same the spaces between sentences will be larger and that’s the desired effect.
Thank you pierre-yves for a concise and accurate answer. I tried to upvote it but it said “>5 points required to upvote”.
Hi
Untick Tools▸AutoCorrect▸Options▸Options tab▸Ignore double spaces
Regards
Thanks for the lightning response. Easy when you know how! Might suggest making that dialogue available in Tools | Options