Single spacing, double spacing, and doing It ones own way?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Steven Oppenheimer wondered: <<I know the "convention" for writing 
these days is single spacing between sentences, not double-spacing.>>

There's no such "convention" outside the world of typewriters, though 
single spacing tends to be standard in word processors. DTP software is 
more intelligent about spacing.

The real issue involves "leading", and the question to ask is "how much 
leading is necessary to let the reader's eye read from left to right 
without jumping lines, and return reliably to the start of the next 
line rather than skipping lines?" For bonus points, supplement that 
with "at what point does the spacing become so wide that the space 
between lines equals the space between paragraphs and readers lose the 
ability to detect where the next paragraph begins?"

The answer for body text is that true single spacing is often too 
tight, but true double spacing is too wide. That's why all decent 
typesetting software lets you define leading as a function of type size 
(which generally correlates to line width too).

<<But to my eye, double-spacing looks better -- it helps each sentence 
stand out more clearly -- and my philosophy has always been to follow 
my judgement if/when the conventions seem flawed.>>

Although I encourage all designers to question the "rules of thumb", 
beware the words "to my eye". Unless your eye is representative of the 
vast majority of your audience, you're producing a design that works 
for you but probably not for them. When you have a diverse audience, 
sticking with proven solutions works best. There are good reasons to 
stick with the established "standard practice": it's a standard because 
it works, and because readers have learned to deal with it, radical 
changes should require a sufficiently dramatic improvement that your 
audience accepts the change.

<<How many people out there agree with me that the single-space 
convention is flawed, and should be reconsidered?>>

As you can tell from my response, I think that single-spacing per se is 
nonsense. Good typography requires some sensitivity to the balance 
between line length, type size, and leading. Simply choosing 
single-spaced type substitutes the rote following of rules for informed 
judgment--rarely a good thing--but you shouldn't break a rule unless 
you know why that rule exists and understand how to improve upon it.

<<how many of you would reject a potential writer simply on account of 
his use of double-spacing on a Web site, or resume?>>

I wouldn't, but I'm much more tolerant than most. But I would reject 
you if you insisted on double spacing when I wanted to stick with 
single-spacing and you couldn't persuade me that your approach is 
better than standard operating procedures. In terms of your own Web 
site (www.OpComm.com), I didn't actually see anything like 
double-spacing (Safari and IE 5.2 on a Mac). I find the type small, but 
that's just me; I prefer larger type.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


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