To double space or not to double space?

I have heard arguments over this question more and more frequently in recent months. People rant about it on blogs or in articles and many seem to have a clear opinion on the subject. A google search of spaces after periods yields hundreds of posters condemning the double space after the period. But the question is, does it really matter?

I have heard valid arguments from both sides and there are people all over the internet willing to offer their own two cents. Personally, I learned to type with the two space rule, likely because my mom learned how to type on a typewriter and she is the one who taught me. While it is probably one of the few times I took technology advice from my mom, I felt she had a point. The use of the double space made my papers easier to read because it broke up the big blocks of text, which made it easier to find where sentences began and ended.

However, after hearing some of the points that one spacers make to defend their view, I have begun to reconsider my stance. The article One Space After a Period, Not Two makes some valid arguments regarding the history of typography and its influence on the spacing. He points out that in the past, professional typographers new the exact spacing required for each letter and the amount of kerning that had to go between various letter combinations. It wasn't until the invention of the typewriter, which uses monospace fonts, that the use of two spaces at the end of a sentence became necessary to find the break in the text. Now that we have computers and the fonts have become proportional again, the extra space creates an unneeded blank spot in the text.

In the end, I'm not sure how much it really matters, as long as the final product is easy to read, but I have now fallen into the one space habit.