Did you know that the practice of putting spaces between words was started by Irish monks writing in Latin?

This is what I discovered from an episode of the Allusionist – apparently when Christianity arrived in Ireland in the 6th century and people started writing in Latin, they put spaces between the words to make texts easier to read. Before then writing in Ireland was done in the Ogham alphabet without spaces between words. So when they started using a different alphabet, the Latin or Roman alphabet, and a language that wasn’t their native one, they weren’t so sure where words began and ended and the spaces made this clear.

Ogham continued to be used to some extent until the 9th century and was used to write Latin, however the Latin alphabet eventually replaced it.

The version of the Latin alphabet used in Ireland until the mid-20th century was the Irish Uncial alphabet or An Cló Gaelach, which is still used for decorative purposes.

The practice of putting spaces between words spread to the rest of Europe over subsequent centuries.

Some languages, like Chinese and Thai, don’t bother with spaces, which can make them tricky to read.