 Some languages , such as French and Spanish , have academies that set language rules . Their publications typically address orthography and grammar as opposed to matters of typography . Style guides are less relevant for such languages , as their academies set prescriptive rules . For example , the Académie française publishes the Dictionnaire de l 'Académie française for French speakers worldwide . The 1992 edition does not provide guidance on sentence spacing , but is single @-@ sentence @-@ spaced throughout — consistent with historical French spacing . The Spanish language is similar . The most important body within the Association of Spanish Language Academies , the Real Academia Española , publishes the Diccionario de la Lengua Española , which is viewed as prescriptive for the Spanish language worldwide . The 2001 edition does not provide sentence spacing guidance , but is itself single sentence spaced . The German language manual Empfehlungen des Rats für Deutsche Rechtschreibung ( " Recommendations of the Council for German Orthography " ) ( 2006 ) does not address sentence spacing . The manual itself uses one space after terminal punctuation . Additionally , the Duden , the German language dictionary most commonly used in Germany , indicates that double sentence spacing is an error . 
