Word spacing

Summary

Typographic practice of putting space between words This article is about the typographic concept. For the practice of writing with spaces between words, see Interword separation. Word spacing in typography is space between words, as contrasted with letter-spacing (space between letters of words) and sentence spacing (space between sentences). Typographers may modify the spacing of letters or words in a body of type to aid readability and copy fit, or for aesthetic effect. In web browsers and standardized digital typography, word spacing is controlled by the CSS1 word-spacing property. Most classical Latin texts were written in scriptio continua, a continuous string of characters without spaces to mark word boundaries. However, some early Greek and Roman texts used interpuncts, small dots, to separate words. Word spacing began much later. Irish monks first started to add word spacing to texts in the late 7th century, creating what Paul Sänger, in his book The Spaces between the Words, refers to as aerated text. By the 11th century, scribes in northern Europe were separating Latin text canonically, that is, with spaces between words, just as we do today in standard written text.[1] Effect on readability[edit] Word spacing is crucial for the written form because it illustrates the sound of speech where audible gaps or pauses take place.[2] With typography, word spacing shows this unspoken aspect of speech.[2] Otherwise, it would be difficult for people to read one long continuous line of letters.[2] It is hard to determine how much spacing should be put in between words, but a good typographer is able to determine proper spacing.[3] When text and spacing are consistent, this makes it easier to read.[3] Geoffrey Dowding describes the nature of spacing since the invention of printing from moveable type in the fifteenth century. Since the fifteenth century, the best work shows that text is to be read smoothly and efficiently.[4] This is because they should always be clos...