Menu Close

When was spacing invented?

When was spacing invented?

Spaces Between Words Haven’t Always Been the Norm It makes you glad scribes in the 10th century AD embraced the idea of spaces between words. Beginning in the Classical Period (around the 5th century BC), scribes wrote in a style called scriptio continua in which all the words were run together without spaces.

Are there still two spaces after a period?

Unless you are typing on an actual typewriter, you no longer have to put two spaces after a period. Or a question mark. Or an exclamation point. The rule applies to all end punctuation.

Who invented spacing?

Beginning in the late 7th century, Irish scribes introduced spaces at irregular intervals to create what Saenger calls ‘aerated’ text , and, by the 11th century, scribes in northern Europe were separating Latin text ‘canonically’ – that is, the way we do now in standard written English, with spaces between words.

Did Romans use spaces between words?

It was a common way of writing for texts in Ancient Greek and Classical Latin. Use of scriptio continua became less common after the fall of the Roman Empire, and spaces began to appear between words. The first known documents that used spacing were Irish and Anglo-Saxon Bibles and Gospels.

How many spaces after a full stop Oxford?

Two spaces
Two spaces after each full stop. Every time. Easy.

When did we stop putting 2 spaces after a period?

The two-space rule took hold in the early twentieth century and became the norm in many high school typing classes. Eventually, sophisticated typewriters and word processing software like Microsoft Word introduced proportional fonts, which made it easier to distinguish the period at end of a sentence as a full stop.

Did English always have spaces?

Modern English uses a space to separate words, but not all languages follow this practice. Spaces were not used to separate words in Latin until roughly 600–800 AD. The earliest signs of spacing between words appear in Latin, where it was used extremely rarely in some manuscripts and then altogether forgotten.

Did Latin use spaces?

Scriptio continua (Latin for “continuous script”) is a style of writing that does not use spaces, different letter cases, or punctuation to tell apart words, phrases, or sentences.

What language has no spaces?

Thai, Lao, and Khmer are languages that are written with no spaces between words. Spaces do occur, but they serve as phrase delimiters, rather than word delimiters. However, when Thai, Lao, or Khmer text reaches the end of a line, the expectation is that text is wrapped a word at a time.

How many spaces after a period is legal?

two spaces
1. Always place two spaces — no more, no less — after a period or other punctuation ending a sentence. This rule should be applied in all instances, including those where a citation follows the period.