From Allen Mercier, Senior Editor, Palio

My high school typing class is never far from my thoughts. It all began in that concrete room of hum and thrum. No, the power of the written word wasn’t on my mind. What I return to daily is far simpler. However, those simpler times now complicate my life. I see the fallout in e-mails, Word docs, InDesign files, and PDFs. Double spaces may be invisible, but I see them everywhere.

Our typing teachers taught us to insert two spaces at the end of a sentence. It’s not our fault, right? We were young and impressionable. I’ve heard the excuses ad nauseam (pharma folks will recognize this common side effect). Double spaces were perfectly acceptable in the days of the IBM Selectric, but we now live in the digital age; the rules have changed. The Chicago Manual of Style states, “A single character space, not two spaces, should be left after periods at the ends of sentences (both in manuscript and in final, published form) and after colons.”

I know what you’re thinking: Rules were meant to be broken. To that I respond with a quote from an article written by a typographic pro, Ilene Strizver: “Forget about tolerating differences of opinion: typographically speaking, typing two spaces before the start of a new sentence is absolutely, unequivocally wrong.” So please do me a favor and stop spacing out.