[Tex/LaTex] LaTeX equivalent of in HTML

Question

In HTML, to get extra horizontal spacing all I would have to do is:

This is textual phrase A   This is textual phrase B

to get the following output:

This is textual phrase A...This is textual Phrase B

. = 1 invisible space character

Question#1: How do you force insert space characters?

Question#2: What is the proper way to fine control horizontal spacing instead of force adding space characters?

Answer 1

In answer to your first question: There are many ways of adding specific spaces to text. Some examples include forcing an actual "inter word space" to specifying a regular space length to specifying a length based on an object (text or otherwise). In that order you can use the following:

\documentclass{minimal}%
\begin{document}
This is textual phrase A\ \ \ This is textual phrase B% 3 inter word spaces
\par
This is textual phrase A\hspace{5em}This is textual phrase B% space of length 5em
\par
This is textual phrase A\hphantom{spaces}This is textual phrase B% space equivalent to length of word 'spaces'
\par
This is textual phrase A\hfill{}This is textual phrase B% infinitely stretchable space
\end{document}

This is the equivalent output:

Perhaps some of these methods answer your second question. However, in its general context, the answers are probably too many to list here.