One space is enough.

For as long as I can remember, double spaces have stood out to me like a sore thumb. I write code for a living, and in code a stray space gets caught by a linter long before anyone reads it. So it's always surprised me how many make it into things that are meant to be read by lots of people: printed books, websites, lecture slides, papers, magazines.

Once you've seen one, you can't unsee it. This site is where they end up. It started as a pet peeve and a fun thing to build in my spare time, so please don't take it too seriously. We shame spaces, not people.

The rules

• Two or more spaces in a row, in something published, is a catch.
• Every submission is reviewed by a human before it goes up.
• We name the publication, never the person who typed it.
• Want something removed? Just ask.

“But two spaces after a full stop is correct!”

It was, on typewriters, where every letter was the same width. Modern typesetting has used a single space for decades. Plain HTML even lends a hand: it folds a run of spaces into one. But editors like WordPress quietly save that second space as a non-breaking one, and those do survive. So they turn up wherever nobody checked: on websites, in print, in PDFs and on slides.

Contact

Questions, suggestions, or a removal request? Email contact at doublespaceproject dot com.