How Many Spaces After A Period

Whichever spacing you choose be sure to use it consistently throughout your paper.

How many spaces after a period. Spacing after a period. But if a closing quotation mark immediately follows any one of these marks don t insert a space between the two marks. When using a monospaced font where everything is the same width it makes sense to type two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence to create a visual break. These days depending on what you re reading you can find either one or two spaces between the end of one sentence and the beginning of another.

The story of spaces after periods is often told as though monospaced typewriter fonts needed two spaces after a sentence for good readability and that the wide availability of proportional fonts on computers led to the switch to one space. Leave one space after a period or other concluding punctuation mark unless your instructor prefers two spaces. For that reason people who learned to type on a typewriter were taught to put two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence. One space after a period.

However if your instructor or non apa publisher has other requirements e g to use two spaces follow their specifications. As a general rule put one space after a period comma colon semicolon question mark or exclamation point. Use one space after a period or other punctuation mark at the end of a sentence when writing in apa style. The two spaces after period rule was established during the days of typesetters when additional space was needed to show the difference between the spacing between words which was smaller and the spacing between sentences which was larger.

There was a time when every period question mark or exclamation point was followed by two spaces.