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How Many Spaces After a Period? A Battle of Stories — 4 Comments

  1. The practical answer is two spaces. I’ve worked with publishers who expect two and publishers who expect one. If they want one and you use two, you can do a universal search and replace in a matter of minutes. If you use one space and they expect two, you have to go through your entire document and insert each one. Try doing that with a 100,000 word novel and tell me how one space is what you should do.

    • You can just as easily turn single-spaces into double-spaces with a find/replace. Just search for “period-space” and replace with “period-space-space.” More difficult is to find a style manual that still specifies double-spaces. The debate rages on, but I still think it really doesn’t make much difference. More important is that neither side of the argument usually depends on an authentic story to support their position. Thanks for writing. —Dave

      • Good luck doing that with dialogue heavy fiction. There’s no space allowed between the period and the final quotation mark.

        • Simply search for “period-quotation mark-space.” It’s all doable with some clever search patterns.