Many people were taught to insert two spaces after a period or an end punctuation mark, but now many publications recommend using just one.
The Chicago Manual of Style, the U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual, and the AP Stylebook are just a few of the style guides that recommend one space after a period.
The story of spaces after periods is often told as though monospaced typewriter fonts needed two spaces after a sentence for good readability. As new fonts were developed for the computer, a wide availability of proportional fonts came to the fore, which led to a switch of one space instead of two spaces.
In monospaced fonts, the letters are all the same width, like the font used in the majority of legal transcription today, the Courier New 12-point font. An "i" is the same width as an "m" with the Courier New 12-point font.
In proportional fonts, such as Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman, the characters are different widths. An "i" is much narrower than an "m."
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