So… Why don’t I see double spaces after your periods? Test. For. Double. Spaces.
EDIT: Yep, double spaces were removed from my test. So, that’s why. Although, they are still there as I’m editing this. So, not removed, just hidden, I guess?
I still double space after a period, because fuck you, it is easier to read. But as a bonus, it helped me prove that something I wrote wasn’t AI. You literally cannot get an AI to add double spaces after a period. It will say “Yeah, OK, I can do that” and then spit out a paragraph without it. Give it a try, it’s pretty funny.
Web browsers collapse whitespace by default which means that sans any trickery or deliberately using nonbreaking spaces, any amount of spaces between words to be reduced into one. Since apparently every single thing in the modern world is displayed via some kind of encapsulated little browser engine nowadays, the majority of double spaces left in the universe that are not already firmly nailed down into print now appear as singles. And thus the convention is almost totally lost.
This seems to match up with some quick tests I did just now, on the pseudonyminized chatbot interface of duckduckgo.
chatgpt, llama, and claude all managed to use double spaces themselves, and all but llama managed to tell I was using them too.
It might well depend on the platform, with the “native” applications for them stripping them on both ends.
tests
Mistral seems a bit confused and uses tripple-spaces.
The word chunks often contain a space because it’s efficient. I would think an extra space would stand out. Writing it back should be easier, assuming there is a dedicated “space” token like other punctuation tokens, there must be.
Hard mode would be asking it how many spaces there are in your sentence. I don’t think they’d figure it out unless their own list of tokens and a description is trained into them specifically.
Double spaces after periods can create “rivers.” This makes text more difficult to read for those with dyslexia. Whatever is used as a text editor is probably stripping them out for accessibility reasons. I suppose double spaces made sense with monospaced fonts.
HTML rendering collapses whitespace; it has nothing to do with accessibility. I would like to see the research on double-spacing causing rivers, because I’ve only ever noticed them in justified text where I would expect the renderer to be inserting extra space after a full stop compared between words within sentence anyway.
I’ve seen a lot of dubious legibility claims when it comes to typography including:
serif is more legible
sans-serif is more legible
comic sans is more legible for people with dyslexia
So… Why don’t I see double spaces after your periods? Test. For. Double. Spaces.
EDIT: Yep, double spaces were removed from my test. So, that’s why. Although, they are still there as I’m editing this. So, not removed, just hidden, I guess?
Web browsers collapse whitespace by default which means that sans any trickery or deliberately using nonbreaking spaces, any amount of spaces between words to be reduced into one. Since apparently every single thing in the modern world is displayed via some kind of encapsulated little browser engine nowadays, the majority of double spaces left in the universe that are not already firmly nailed down into print now appear as singles. And thus the convention is almost totally lost.
This seems to match up with some quick tests I did just now, on the pseudonyminized chatbot interface of duckduckgo.
chatgpt, llama, and claude all managed to use double spaces themselves, and all but llama managed to tell I was using them too.
It might well depend on the platform, with the “native” applications for them stripping them on both ends.
tests
Mistral seems a bit confused and uses tripple-spaces.
Tokenization can make it difficult for them.
The word chunks often contain a space because it’s efficient. I would think an extra space would stand out. Writing it back should be easier, assuming there is a dedicated “space” token like other punctuation tokens, there must be.
Hard mode would be asking it how many spaces there are in your sentence. I don’t think they’d figure it out unless their own list of tokens and a description is trained into them specifically.
Markdown usually collapses double spaces, yeah. But you can force the double spaces. Like this.
Double spaces after periods can create “rivers.” This makes text more difficult to read for those with dyslexia. Whatever is used as a text editor is probably stripping them out for accessibility reasons. I suppose double spaces made sense with monospaced fonts.
https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/paper-format/accessibility/typography#myth4
HTML rendering collapses whitespace; it has nothing to do with accessibility. I would like to see the research on double-spacing causing rivers, because I’ve only ever noticed them in justified text where I would expect the renderer to be inserting extra space after a full stop compared between words within sentence anyway.
I’ve seen a lot of dubious legibility claims when it comes to typography including:
and so on.