 Modern style guides provide standards and guidance for the written language . These works are important to writers since " virtually all professional editors work closely with one of them in editing a manuscript for publication . " Late editions of comprehensive style guides , such as the Oxford Style Manual ( 2003 ) in the United Kingdom and the Chicago Manual of Style ( 2010 ) in the United States , provide standards for a wide variety of writing and design topics , including sentence spacing . The majority of style guides now prescribe the use of a single space after terminal punctuation in final written works and publications . A few style guides allow double sentence spacing for draft work , and the Gregg Reference Manual makes room for double and single sentence spacing based on author preferences . Web design guides do not usually provide guidance on this topic , as " HTML refuses to recognize double spaces altogether . " These works themselves follow the current publication standard of single sentence spacing . 
