I’ve been writing manuscripts for decades. I always put two spaces after punctuation and dialogue where the quote is not proceeded by a comma, em-dash, or semicolon. I noticed Replace multiple spaces with single space option, however I actually need the opposite, Replace single space after punctuation with two spaces. Is that something the product does, or could do?
I expect that you could craft a RegularExpresion that would find pretty much the right space character instances to target for replacement, but I am not the regExp expert who could tell you how.
-gr
That said (and probably you know where this next bit is going already), I would advise you to break your double-spacing habit. Like tab characters used for indentation and double carriage returns used for paragraph separation, double spaces are things that any typesetter will summarily strip from your manuscript before doing anything else. Which leaves us with a question: why perform this extra bit of manual labor that must always be undone.
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Hey, that’s right. Scrivener has regular expressions. Hope they’re JS style, but that could do it. I’ll investigate. Thanks.
So, what’s the difference between these two sentences?
"That's not true!" Stella hissed.
"That's not true!" Stella hissed.
(I hope the code section preserved the spaces. If not, the first example has one space after the quote and the second two.)
The first line is one sentence, with one space indicating attribution and hissed syllables. I’m using hiss not said as an illustration.
The second line is two sentences! Stella denied. Stella subsequently hissed. This is indicated by two spaces. Without the two spaces after punctuation (whether quoted or not), the manuscript is ambiguous. Proper spacing is required by the typesetter to their job properly. We use monospaced fonts in manuscripts for this reason.
As a novelist, i know there are other situations where two spaces are important, mostly to do with dialogue. I can’t think offhand of a non-fiction example, but there probably is one. HTML condenses out multiple spaces by default, which is why there is a pre tag and non-breaking space entity, but there are other more analogue publishing methods.
Stupid question (I already regret it), but: What would he do with it? Setting it with two spaces?
APA, the Chicago Manual, and MLA all say that you’re wrong, and so probably your copyeditor will as well. If you feel that it’s ambiguous, rephrase the sentence. Ending the One Space vs. Two Spaces After a Period Argument — Studio Chavelli: Calligraphy & Design
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While I agree with you (one space is the way to go today), it’s a bit funny that the linked site itself falls victim to a—pretty common—myth, stating:
The rationale behind using two spaces after a period hails from the era of typewriters.
Nope. It was taught that way at the time when typing was taught, that’s true. But the habit actually came from typesetting and proportional fonts. And yes, it’s a bit easier on the eyes when it comes to monospaced fonts. If you’re used to it already.
Examples: How Many Spaces After a Period? Ending the Debate : The World's Greatest Book
(Add: Doesn’t mean all old books used two spaces, of course!)
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In Dutch punctuation it would be:
"That's not true," Stella hissed.
"That's not true." Stella hissed.
(Hissing in exclamation is debatable, I think.)
Just saying…
Well, that’s right. However, my original included an exclamation mark intentionally, otherwise a comma would have been required for a single sentence. Hiss is a said-ism, again used intentionally for illustration—and noted.
As noted elsewhere, I was taught to use two spaces in the age of typewriters. I first sold in 1982, and my agent and publisher were adamant about the formatting. I used an Apple ][ and an Epson line printer at that time.
If that’s the new format, it’s the new format. I burnt out in 2001 and am restarting my writing career so I guess it’s good I learn this?
Your linked article implies proper submittable manuscript format doesn’t need to be courier 12 pt double-spaced anymore. Remember that your manuscript is “programming” for publishers and typesetters. That is why I am buying Scrivener, to write manuscripts. Manuscript format is not book format, for which arguments of variable-width fonts and two spaces “looking-off” apply.
Would you like to link to the format publishers expect today?
Generally speaking, Courier or Times Roman, 12 point, double-space, with 1-inch margins. This is the format implemented by Scrivener’s “Manuscript” Compile Formats.
A number of publishers point to this link: Proper Manuscript Format for Fiction Writers | William Shunn
But consult the specific publisher you intend to submit to, as they all have slightly different requirements.
Bloomsbury, as an example, says to follow Hart’s for UK English and CMOS for US English.
Both style guides stipulate a single space after all sentence punctuation.
‘A single word space is used after all sentence punctuation (not a double space, as was conventional in typewritten text. ’ – New Hart’s Rules
‘Neither Chicago nor AP nor any other style that we know of—including APA, as of the seventh edition of its style manual, published in late 2019—recommends more than one space after a period.’ – CMOS
Even if you successfully find a way to get two spaces after punctuation between sentences, don’t be surprised when e-book readers see that as a mistake and correct it for you. iBooks/Kindle both do. It likely wouldn’t make it through print book formatting, either.
And, BTW, if Stella is a human being, she can’t hiss a reply. She can reply and then she can hiss, or she can hiss and then reply. But she can’t do them simultaneously, because a reply in words and a hiss are two different things. So the best thing to do would probably be to put the action tag of hissing in a separate sentence rather than connecting it as a dialogue tag to the original sentence. (maybe the best thing would be to find a better verb, and limit your tags to ‘said’ and ‘asked’)
Agents and publishers would find that as an excuse to immediately toss your manuscript, were you to use ‘hiss’ as a D-tag. Just the word ‘hiss’ might be enough to get it tossed.
It would stick if you use non-break spaces.
They are not considered as blank space.
They also don’t change length when the text is Justified.
Oh, that’s right! I use them all the time ahead of ellipses.
I do have one instance where I want to have three very short sentences in a paragraph of IM, and I wanted the three sentences to stand out very starkly, so I tried to put double spaces after them, and it didn’t work. So I just tried nonbreaking spaces, and you’re right—it works.
Oh, wait a minute—does this mean if I did a Project Replace and changed all spaces to nonbreaking spaces, this would kill double justification (which I hate with a passion) on Kindle?
No, that might not format at all since I don’t know where the line breaks would be.
I think project replace doesn’t recognize non-break spaces anyways.
It does. I just tested it. I was able to replace nonbreaking spaces with regular spaces.
I was also able to replace regular spaces with nonbreaking spaces. To make that work you have to invoke ‘Starts With’.
But I don’t think there’s any value there. It seems this just confuses an e-reader, and it doesn’t know where to break lines other than by hyphenating words that we probably don’t want hyphenated unless they have to be.
So I tested that, and yes, it just makes a mess out of things.
That space, once a non-breaking space, is no longer “a space”. It is a space to the human eye, but, to the e-reader, it is rather a character like any other (a, b, $, ! etc).
So, “wonderful things”, for example, becomes one single long word for an e-reader. And therefor it will hyphenate it, if needed, where it can.
Just like it would hyphenate “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis” if needed.
Plus, by using a non break space, you specifically told the e-reader not to split where the space is. So it’ll split where it can, but never there.
Abusive use of non break spaces can lead to awkward visual rendering. Some people like bigger fonts; screens are of different sizes.
Think of the length of the “long word” you end up creating not as regard to the number of letters it contains, but rather vs the space it’ll occupy on a single line.
I think I got confused with substitutions from the options.
Or maybe that just doesn’t work for me, under Windows…
Good job you are not using LyX (a quasi-WYSIWYG LaTeX) where any attempt to enter two spaces after punctutation will earn you a vitriolic message that effectively means “don’t be so stupid.”
What I absolutely loved about the OP’s post that started this aging thread is that he had it firmly in his mind there was a typographic principle according to which sometimes you were supposed to double space after a quoted material. I know of no precedent for this idea and the thread basically corroborated that.
But that’s why I love it. And more so since I just recent caught myself in a similar case!
Story time.
I was working with my eldest brother — a longtime typography enthusiast — who was developing his page layout software chops. I was regaling him with a latest triumph — which was working out an inDesign script to implement a principle that had cost me much manual labor over the years. Only to realize, in discussion, that no book I could pull off my shelf implemented this particular design rule. What?! Still, I was sure I picked it up in my own studies of book design, sure Bringhurst would back me up on this. Nope! And neither did his book follow the principle.
So there I was with an iron-clad book design principle apparently crafted out of nowhere that I just knew was a real rule — but it isn’t. Apparently.
The rule? This: If a paragraph starts at the beginning of the text block on a page, do not indent its first line.
This principle (as fabled by my delusion) was about maintaining the visual integrity of the text block — not to have an unnecessary nick out of the corner of it.
Such was my fantasy book layout rule. Still makes a lot of sense to me — and I can automate it in inDesign. But it does now seem like I might have inadvertently made it up.
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