Not space, the final frontier.
We’re talking about the much smaller spaces you bang out on your keyboard.
Not all spaces are created equal.
Franck-Boston / iStock / Getty Images
And spaces between words and sentences differ among the many written languages of the world.
We’ll touch on Web spaces too.
As a whole, these arewhite space characters.
(Related to but not to be confused with thedesign principleof white space.)
Number of Spaces
Did you know that not all languages put a space between words?
And space between sentences varies as well.
The debate over one space or two between sentences goes back and forth.
Sometimes there are more on the one space side and at other times the two-spacers lead the discussion.
In typeset material, one space is the preferred number of spaces.
Plenty do.).
It’s not only space between words and sentences that become an issue in print and the Web.
There are customary conventions when it comes to space before or after certain symbols and abbreviations.
Yet, in other languages a space before % is the norm.
Sometimes spaces are used to improve the appearance of the text rather than because of any specific style guide.
This may be referred to as line wrap, text-wrap, or line break.
This can result in awkward or less-than-ideal breaks such as:
The QA conference is planned for April5.
I’d like all the team leaders to arrive by 7AM for a quick run-through.
You are alsoexpected to attend a break-out session atnoon with special guest, Alexander FinlayJohnston, V.P.
of QA Operations South.
This can be achieved with a non-breaking space between the parts you don’t want to be separated.
Other names for a non-breaking space include non-breakable space, fixed space, or hard space.
Size of Spaces
The size of a space in typography is not absolute.
It changes relative to the point size of the typeface.
Several special spaces are used in typesetting and are based on an em.
An em is equivalent to the point size of a given font.
In a 12 point font, the em is 12 points.
Instead, they will insert em, en, thin, hair spaces, or some other spacing.
In other cases, it’s a matter of opinion or preference of the client or designer.
Note that some browsers may not display some of these characters correctly, if at all.
To insert these special characters on a Mac use the Character Palette/Character Viewer.
For Windows use Character Map (use Alt + 0160 on the numeric keyboard for a non-breaking space).
Note that not all fonts contain all these special space characters.
To quickly find all the available space characters in a font using Windows 7 Character Map:
