Space (whitespace) is a whole group of glyphs, one of the most important and frequently-used. Any computer user knows space as the widest key on their keyboard, however the notion itself is much bigger and comprises multiple important typographic terms and ideas.
Space in general is a blank unprinted area, a counterform that separates letters, words, lines etc. In typography, there are several types of spaces: sinkage (space on a page above a textblock), indent (space before the paragraph), leading (vertical space), word spacing, and letter spacing. In this article, we will primarily focus on word spacing, i.e. the space as a glyph.
European languages did not use word spacing for a long time, it was not until the 7th century that word spacing entered Latin script. In the age of metal type, the space was a material, tangible object — a piece of metal that left no print. In the pre-digital era, most text blocks were justified, which required several spaces of different width. Those types of spacing were defined by the notion of em (or point size), which is height of the piece of metal
Diagram of a cast metal sort, c is point size used for printing a character. For example, one em in a 12-point typeface is 12 points, whereas its en (half-em) spaces’ width is 6pt, third space (of an em) equals 4pt, and so on.
Whitespace characters in Gauge. Widths and correlations between spaces differ depending on the typeface
These types of spaces are still existent in the digital age, but they are mostly used by advanced typographers. Messengers, text editors, and other programs and applications most typically use only regular space.
Word space
Standard space, word space, space per se, is the symbol typed using the widest key on the keyboard.
In metal type, the size of standard space varied depending on the typographic tradition, in most cases the space was rather wide.
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