how to double space in microsoft word 2018

( Courier fonts are a notorious exception.) To help readers more easily spot the ends of sentences, the two-space rule was put into effect-and for many, the habit stuck, even as typewriters gave way to computers that offered more proportionally spaced fonts, writes Ellen Gutoskey for Mental Floss. As Avi Selk reported for the Washington Post in 2018, many proponents of the rule are traditionalists from the era of manual typewriters, which relied on monospaced type, with each character occupying an equal amount of horizontal space. Still, the truth of the matter is that double-spacers are a rapidly disappearing demographic. “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,” says Kirk Gregersen, partner director of program management at Microsoft, in a statement to the Verge. Users will be able to accept the change, ignore it once or disable the program’s ability to highlight two-space gaps entirely. Microsoft Word is an exceedingly passive editor and can be rejiggered to ignore all sorts of spelling and grammar quirks it might otherwise flag. Though the feature isn’t yet universal, the company has begun trialing the change in desktop versions of the program and will likely be rolling it out to all users soon.īefore panic ensues among “two-spacers,” take comfort in the fact that the program’s suggestion is just that-a suggestion. As Tom Warren reports for the Verge, Microsoft Word has started marking double spaces between sentences as errors. Now, a veritable powerhouse has entered the fray-and definitively taken a side. Some maintain that two spaces between sentences make paragraphs easier to read others, like Slate’s Farhad Manjoo, who wrote in 2011 that “typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong,” vehemently disagree. Virtual wars have been waged over that humble second space. It centers on the idea of nothingness-specifically, the number of spaces found between the end of one sentence and the beginning of another.Īnd what a difference a single keystroke can make. One of the greatest debates in typographical history is arguably an empty one.

How to double space in microsoft word 2018