In
writing, a
space () is a blank area devoid of content, serving to
separate words, letters, numbers, and
punctuation. Conventions for
interword and
intersentence spaces vary among languages, and in some cases the spacing rules are quite complex. In the
classical period, Latin was written with
interpuncts (centred dots) as
word separators, but that practice was abandoned sometime around 200 CE in favour of
scriptio continua, i.e., with the words running together without any word separators. In around 600–800 CE, blank spaces started being inserted between words in Latin, and that practice carried over to all languages using the
Latin alphabet (including
English and most other Western European languages).