From the course: The 33 Laws of Typography
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10 Separate sentences with one space, not two
From the course: The 33 Laws of Typography
10 Separate sentences with one space, not two
- Law 10: Separate sentences with one space, not two. Many people were taught, and are still being taught, that when typing, two spaces should be added at the end of a sentence. This is a convention that exists because of outdated technology. It was never meant to be applied to modern professionally produced documents. Here's a paragraph that is set with two spaces between each sentence. And this paragraph is set with one space between each sentence. The point of a document is for readers to focus on the text, not the spaces between sentences. In this first example, the extra spaces call way too much attention to themselves. The amount of white space is jarring, and it's disrupting the flow of the paragraph. In the second example, the spaces between sentences don't get in the way and overall, the paragraph is much more visually pleasing. If you open a modern professionally typeset book, magazine, brochure, or other printed document, you will see one space between all sentences. So why…
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Contents
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07 Set printed body text from 9 to 11 points4m 45s
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(Locked)
08 Set body text two to three alphabets wide4m 13s
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(Locked)
09 Favor flush-left, ragged-right body text4m 14s
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(Locked)
10 Separate sentences with one space, not two4m 11s
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(Locked)
11 Don't allow less than seven characters on a line6m 9s
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(Locked)
12 Avoid bad paragraph breaks5m 44s
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(Locked)
13 Avoid line-breaking hyphens4m 2s
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(Locked)
14 Signal new paragraphs once, not twice5m 4s
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(Locked)
15 Break up large blocks of text5m 17s
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