Use Automatic Spacing

With Automatic Spacing, Instant Text automatically adds spacing after punctuations and expansions.

Tentative spaces

The spaces added are said to be tentative spaces, because Instant Text may remove them afterwards, if the key you type next indicates that they were probably unwanted.

For example, if you type three periods in a row ... you will notice that Instant Text will remove the tentative space(s) inserted after the first and the second period. Typing numbers or times are also cases where you will see that Instant Text removes the tentative space(s) after the period, the comma or the colon:

...

98.7

100,000

7:30 am

Spacing after a punctuation

The spacing added after each punctuation mark can be configured in the Automatic Spacing Options Dialog. The default values are:

A single space after a comma, a colon, or a semi-colon.
Two spaces after a period, a question mark, or an exclamation mark.

Spacing after an expansion

The spacing added after an expansion is dictated by the last character of the expansion:

Expansion ends with	Spaces added after the expansion:
a punctuation	Instant Text adds the number of spaces as defined in the Automatic Spacing Options Dialog.
return tab space non breaking space	No spacing is added in that case.
any other character	Instant Text adds one space.

Example:

abbreviation	expansion: (with final space)
oot;	one of the

This means you can chain abbreviations without intervening spaces:

abbreviations	expansions
oot;ixb[cccs[of	one of the inexplicable circumstances of
oot;ixb[cccs[.	one of the inexplicable circumstances.

See also: Overriding automatic spacing