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I'd like to add a "normal" space, where the length of the space is the same as the length of the space between the words you are reading right now.

How can I accomplish this?

Buffer Over Read
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    An escaped space \. That is – Au101 Nov 07 '16 at 23:01
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    Or you can use \space. –  Nov 07 '16 at 23:02
  • Perhaps better to close as a duplicate of What commands are there for horizontal spacing? – Alan Munn Nov 07 '16 at 23:05
  • @Alan Munn I'm asking about a specific space command, not asking for a list of all of them. – Buffer Over Read Nov 07 '16 at 23:12
  • Yes, but item 13 in the accepted answer gives you the answer you're looking for. On some stacks there is an accepted policy of answers can make questions dupes, i.e. if the answer is to be found somewhere under an existing question, the new question is closed as dupe. Many people have strong feelings about this and we don't tend to do that here. However, as all the information you need and more is already to be found on this site, this question is probably better used as a signpost to that question. – Au101 Nov 07 '16 at 23:15
  • You can see, I hope, that it would better to have that as a master question and questions like 'how do I get a normal space', 'how do I get a thin space', 'how do I get a 1 em space' (were they all to exist) closed and pointing to that, rather than having that and lots of subquestions existing separately – Au101 Nov 07 '16 at 23:16
  • Exactly. Fundamentally this is no different a question that "how do I produce this symbol", for which rather than having a huge number of individual questions/answers we redirect to a general question about looking up symbols. – Alan Munn Nov 07 '16 at 23:21
  • @Au101 The answer you linked does not seem to explicitly mention the normal word space is #13, I only knew it was #13 because you told me it was. I could have posted my question as a comment under that answer, I guess, but the first answer to my question already has some people disagreeing which commands produces the space I want. It might not be #13 after all, and it might equally indeed be that, and I posted that thought as a separate question. If you think a simple comment would suffice, let me know and I'll delete this question. – Buffer Over Read Nov 07 '16 at 23:24
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    No no please don't delete duplicate questions, they're useful. Now, somebody looking for a normal space will find this question and be able to follow the link to that question. This is good. Closing as duplicate isn't a punishment, the worst thing it can do is slightly depress the rep that you might have got. This is an unfortunate side-effect, but we like them, because they act as sign posts and now, with this comment thread and the answer, it will be clear to others how to get the answer out of that question. But it doesn't make sense to have this question open in terms of organisation – Au101 Nov 07 '16 at 23:28

1 Answers1

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There are several ways to do this. A simple way would be to use ~ or \ this would give an extra gap the size of one space. I would also recommend seeing this question: What commands are there for horizontal spacing?

Example:

\documentclass{article} 
\begin{document}
\noindent
text spacing\\
text ~spacing\\
\end{document}

This yields:

enter image description here

Note that LaTeX often does spacing automatically to eliminate line breaks so in a document the regular space between words can vary.

Community
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Dan
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    \:\: is not the same as a word space, this answer is at best misleading – David Carlisle Nov 07 '16 at 23:10
  • without amsmath.amsart (which is not mentioned in the question) \: is an error in text mode, and with it it is a horizontal space of a different size to \space – David Carlisle Nov 07 '16 at 23:12
  • @DavidCarlisle When I was writing it I tried to make the space the width of a character. Which was a mistake. I will edit it to make it only have \:. Thanks – Dan Nov 07 '16 at 23:12
  • no \: is wrong you need to edit the answer not to have \:. – David Carlisle Nov 07 '16 at 23:14
  • @DavidCarlisle I hope my new edit makes this answer satisfactory. I replaced \: with ~. – Dan Nov 07 '16 at 23:19
  • It's better but it would have been better just to say use \ as was correctly said already in the comments under the question. Why imply \ is just for math mode? (it should not normally be used in math mode) unlike \: which by default can only be used in math mode. – David Carlisle Nov 07 '16 at 23:21
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    ~ isn't just any old space, though, it's a non-breaking space - it prevents a line-break at that point – Au101 Nov 07 '16 at 23:21