Those who failed to transition from the typewriter days and insist on inserting two spaces after full-stop, your time is up.
Microsoft has officially declared the double space an error.
According to The Verge, Microsoft has begun updating Word to highlight double spaces after a full-stop to indicate a mistake, suggesting users amend the typo to a single space.
If you are determined to stick to your archaic ways, however, Word will allow you to ignore the suggestion.
“As the crux of the great spacing debate, we know this is a stylistic choice that may not be the preference for all writers, which is why we continue to test with users and enable these suggestions to be easily accepted, ignored, or flat out dismissed in Editor,” Kirk Gregersen, partner director of program management at Microsoft, told The Verge.
It's official: one space after a full-stop, not two. Source: The Verge
For the young ones out there who perhaps aren’t aware double spaces after full-stops is even a thing, the trend harks back to typewriter days when every letter was allocated the same amount of space on a key.
This meant a narrow letter such as an ‘i’ or ‘l’ was given the same amount of space as a wider letter, such as an ‘m’ or ‘w’.
To make it clearer the end of a sentence had been reached, people began typing two spaces after a full-stop, and for some, that habit didn’t die – even with the advent of computers which made spacing for letters proportional.
But now Microsoft has weighed in to the hotly debated question of whether to type one space or two after a full-stop.
It’s officially one.
To those stuck in 1984, stop fighting it – it’s 2020 and the world has well and truly moved on.
