Nothing drives me insane like two spaces after a period. It looks ugly, it's distracting and above all, it's wrong. Unfortunately people seem reluctant to change their habits and worse yet, many old-school keyboard instructors are still teaching incorrect spacing. Even Microsoft Word is a huge offender! But then again, it is Microsoft.

The problem exists because it is correct to place two spaces after a period on a typewriter. Characters on a typewriter are monospaced, which means all the letters take up the same amount of space and it is visually necessary to place an extra space after a period for the eye to recognize a new sentence.

This paragraph is in Courier, a monospaced font.
Notice how all the characters take up the same
amount of space and line up in columns.

Today, almost all fonts are proportional, which means the letters take up a unique amount of space, i.e. an "i" takes up only about one-fifth the space of the letter "m." Therefore, unless you are typing in a monospaced font, like Courier (which is not advisable) or have located a typewriter that still works and are using it because you have far too much spare time on your hands, you need only put one space between sentences.

This paragraph is in Times, a proportional font (unless
you have specified a different font in your browser),
Notice how all the characters take up different
amounts of space and do not line up in columns.

With proportional fonts, the extra space after the period is already built in, therefore adding another space is redundant and inappropriate. This one-space rule applies to colons, semi-colons, question marks, quotation marks, exclamation points and all other punctuation. If you're still a nonbeliever, check out this report compiled by John S. Rhodes, (which presents for/against arguments) or just look at any book or magazine professionally published—you'll never find a double space.

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