How do you set Pages to automatically space twice after a period?

Peter,

I tested your suggestion and found that it didn't work.

What did work is to replace "." with ". ". That is replace a period with a period and a space. It is the typing of the space that activates the substitution, so you end up with a period with a space (by substitution) and the space you typed.

Jerry

Yellowbox wrote:

...

Beware of replacing a period with period space. Any decimal points will also obey this command!

Ian,

I believe that if you test you will find that Autorrecting period to period space causes no problems with decimal number values.

Jerry

Do people still do that? That's ridiculous, computers are not typewriters.

Menu > Pages > Preferences > Auto-Correction > Symbol and text substitution > Replace a period with one space With a period with two spaces

Peter

Hi vallejoarmy,

Here is a method that I have used. Don't worry about typing double spaces or automatically replacing (substituting) single with double spaces. Write your thesis as if there is no tomorrow. Save, save, save. Backup, backup, backup. When your thesis is almost ready, first clean it up to remove accidental double spaces (they do happen with cutting and pasting!)

Menu > Edit > Find... > Find

In the Find box , type space space

In the Replace box, type space

Replace All

Repeat until all multiple spaces are replaced with single spaces.

Then Menu > Edit > Find... > Find

In the Find box, type period space

In the Replace box, type period space space

Replace All

To clean up after repeated Find and Replace, get rid of any extra spaces with

Find: period space space space and

Replace with: period space space

Repeat until there are no triple (3) spaces.

Beware of replacing a period with period space. Any decimal points will also obey this command!

Good luck with your thesis.

Regards,

Ian

Message was edited by: Yellowbox. Pages requires Menu > Edit > Find... > Find to get to the Find/Replace box.

PeterBreis0807 wrote:

Good point Jerrold.

Always get caught when I don't test. 🙂

Peter

😝 -- My first instinct was the same solution you suggested and I was off testing it when you posted. I had just found what worked when I saw your post.

Jerry

Ian,

This comment isn't really specific to your solution, but since that one seemed the best to me, I'm addressing it that way.

I'm guessing that the OP is using APA style, or something similar, and, in addition to the problem that you mentioned with the decimal point, any automatic solution is going to have a problem distinguishing between the period at the end of a sentence (which is "supposed" to get a double space) and the period after an abbreviation (which only gets a single space).

Jeff

Peter,

It would be nice to think so, but I doubt if the APA even knows what a monospaced font is.

Actually, they only specify the double space after a sentence for draft versions of a document. Apparently you should go back and convert them to single spaces before publishing.

The APA has been known to try to rewrite rules of grammar every couple years for political correctness. Anyone who respects the English language (or, probably, other languages, but I don't know about that) or good typography would do well to ignore the APA.

Jeff

Inspector > Text > After Paragraph > 13/14pt or whatever your line's set to

Peter

Good point Jerrold.

Always get caught when I don't test. 🙂

Peter

This is all happening in mono-spaced typewriter text right? 😉

Peter

Hi Jeff,

I forgot about abbreviations such as et al. and etc.

Thanks for the hint.

Regards,

Ian.

Hi Jerry,

Thanks for the hint. I was thinking that 123.45 would change to 123. 45 which it would do with my suggestion!

Regards,

Ian.

Just when you think that some Apple app was created by a bunch of student programmers, you find that something exceeds your expectations. Take the good with the bad, I guess.

Jerry