The article describes the development of the typographical practice of placing spaces between words in the early printed Glagolitic books and the swift decline in the 16 th century of the use of so-called word-blocks in favour of full word separation.Little studied but signifi cant for our understanding of a host of writing and reading practices, ranging from the rhetorical and compositional features of the medieval Croatian Church Slavonic texts to the linguistic norms of early modern works, the use of the white space consistently increases over time as modern typographical practices take hold.In the context of widespread changes in mechanical printing practices in the 15 th -17 th centuries, the paper looks at the increasing use of white space between all words, primarily in the CrCS printed liturgical books and on the parallel decrease in the use of word-blocks (zdruenice).Given the larger movement toward regularization of liturgical texts in the 16 th century and the growing awareness of linguistic science our examination of typesetting practices offers some insights into the implementation of regularized linguistic norms for the Glagolitic liturgical books and makes it possible to conclude that the more widespread typesetting practices of the secular presses quickly gained a foothold in the ecclesiastical printeries.There was, moreover, a rapid conformity to the Western typographical practice of separating words as the smallest units of independent meaning; i.e. in accordance with our own contemporary practices.