Extra Space

One of the formatting reviews I do with a manuscript is to check the last sentence of every paragraph and look for an extra space after the final punctuation mark. Yes, it’s tedious. It’s better than the alternative, though. How do they get there? Moving stuff around, splitting a big paragraph into two, deleting text, or even just hitting the space bar unintentionally. You might ask, “What’s the big deal? Nobody will ever notice an blank space the width of a character. It’s invisible.” Thanks for asking. I’ll tell you why it’s a big deal. Taking at least an hour to check for those spaces saves frustration and extra work. While they are certainly not noticeable when you’re reading, they throw off the paragraph. What does that mean? I’ll give you an example. I uploaded an eBook manuscript a couple of years ago and flipped through all the pages using the Kindle preview app to make sure everything looked good. I found an instance where that extra space at paragraph end caused the final word to drop to the next line. In other words, the space made the word too long to fit on that line of text. This caused a big blank on that line and an orphan on the new line. I fixed it and re-uploaded the manuscript. As I continued , I found another. And another. I must’ve uploaded that manuscript at least five times. Same thing can also happen to your print version. If you’re formatting your own book, take a tip from an idiot who learned the hard way: get rid of the extra spaces.