The Two-Spacer Manifesto For Legal Writing

Does sentence spacing really matter? This law professor thinks so, and is leading the double-spacing rebellion.

Note: When I wrote my first piece about two spacing, I had no idea it would be so controversial or that I would be the leader of a grammar rebellion.  This post is written in that spirit.

Comrades of Team Double-Space (the two spaces after the period at the end of the a sentence),

It has been a while since I wrote “In Defense of Space,” my blog post  manifesto about having two spaces after a period.  The result was astonishingly polarizing, with our one-spacing oppressors advocating that my position was outdated, speculating that I’m a septuagenarian, and then rehashing the history of typewriters and variable fonts to suggest that I’m somehow a madman.

My fellow two-spacing comrades came to my defense, arguing the readability of the extra space.  The words seemed more crammed together without them, they argued.  More angsty.  With two spaces, there was breath between the sentences.  The words seemed less alienated from their author.  In short, single-spacing exploits and alienates us from our creative selves.  This argument would have made brother Karl Marx proud, especially after his 200th birthday.

Other comrades pointed to a survey of judges.  The survey demonstrates that judges seem to prefer two spaces after a period, not one.  There are, of course, famous judges who are adamant the other way, including my friend yet arch-nemesis of the single-space class Chief Judge Dillard of the Georgia State Court of Appeals (it’s okay to call you a friend, right?).

Then, out of nowhere, I was attacked by the leader of the oppressive single-space class, Bryan Garner.  Indeed, in the form of Judge Dillard and Professor Garner, the single-spacing army brought forth its most valiant and respected warriors to do battle with me.

But now, my fellow rebels, we have science on our side.  That’s right.  Science.  An article published in the journal Attention, Perception and Psychophysics by Rebecca Johnson, Becky Bui, and Lindsay Schmitt suggests that I’m completely right about two spaces after a period.  Well, marginally right.  But still, I’m right.

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Comrades, here’s what they found:  They took 60 student volunteers.  They required each of them to do some typing, to control for those who were single-spacers and those who were using the correct amount of spaces.  Then, they had each student read various passages of single, double, and zero-spaced sentences.  They monitored each volunteer with eye-tracking equipment. The result:  The students’ eyes lingered less over sentences ended with a period and a double-space than the others.  BOOM!

Now comes the bad news for those of us fighting to liberate ourselves from the evil oppressors.  It appears that single-spacing and double-spacing after periods yields no difference in reading comprehension.  Comrades, I attribute this finding to the shortness of the reading sample.  I imagine given the eye tracking equipment findings that by the time someone read the APA style manual single-spaced they would be exhausted and swear off books.  It would also be blasphemy.

Worse, the study was using Courier font, the sacred font of us double-spacers.  So sacred we no longer use it.  Thus, the study appears biased from the get-go.  I hope that more studies come forth that support the true and righteous path of us double-spacers.

While I’m back on my soapbox, Comrades:  I feel that the propagandists of single-spacing have failed to understand the originals of single-spacing, as if it were “invented” by computers.  No, my friends, single-spacing has been around since typewriters.  It’s called “French” spacing.  That’s right, you perpetuators of this horrible propaganda.  The French.  Those of you who called French fries “freedom fries” last decade are now embracing French typesetting techniques.  So, while many of you accuse me of being elderly for double-spacing, I’m going to start accusing you of being French.  Has a certain “je ne sais quoi” to it, doesn’t it?

In short, while we appear to be losing the war, Comrades, don’t give up hope.  Science has backed us.  Judges continue to back us, for the most part.  It is only a matter of time before our revolution will happen.  We will then march in the streets, with two spaces between us.

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LawProfBlawg is an anonymous professor at a top-100 law school. You can see more of his musings here He is way funnier on social media, he claims.  Please follow him on Twitter (@lawprofblawg) or Facebook. Email him at lawprofblawg@gmail.com.