http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_spacing

On Aug 23, 2008, at 2:52 PM, Benjamin Horst wrote:

I have to point out that a single space between sentences is not just a web-ism, it is in fact the correct way to write in any digital medium. This is because of the way letters and spaces are composed digitally, versus the older way used by typewriters. Digital letters take up whatever width is appropriate based on the actual width of each individual glyph, whereas typewriters had a fixed width for all glyphs (letters, symbols, digits, etc).

The hack of using two spaces on typewriters was necessary because a lot of white space could appear between letters that were narrow, and thus even more white space was needed to visually separate sentences. The hack was not ever used in other media, such as printing presses or in professionally typeset materials, and now that software can intelligently manage the width of glyphs, there is no longer any need for the double spaces between sentences.

It's been a long time since I used MS Word (OpenOffice displaced it for me), but I recall the grammar checker would catch double-spaces between sentences and mark it as incorrect. Is this no longer the standard behavior?

I was reluctant and annoyed when first told about this--how could my high school typing teacher have been wrong? But my company showed me some online documentation (which I have since lost track of) assuring me that single spaces between sentences is the correct way. And I've adjusted and it works great.

-Ben

On Aug 23, 2008, at 1:00 PM, John van V. wrote:

...

I considered attempting to install TinyMCE because my use for Mediawiki right now is to develop technical documents, and also social science arguments about <see sig>

What troubles me about the Mediawiki editor is not the small feature set, but the lack of double spaces between sentences. This "webism" forces me to use M$ Word in the library, which scans for this writing error.

I read that there had been problems, so I went to the Moxiecode owned Mediawiki, and the Moxie coders have not themselves implemented it there, so....

~~John

Empathy http://thinman.com/empathy

Photography http://thinman.com/photography

Technology http://thinman.com

Benjamin Horst bhorst@mac.com 646-464-2314 (ET)

On Aug 23, 2008, at 10:19 PM, Steve VanSlyck wrote:

It is definitely not "webism," which repeats, over and over again, the worst mistakes of common English grammar and punctuation.

hear, hear. though i find it hard to use upper case in net communication (call it the unix distortion) i'm abhorred even at the mistakes now common on the New York Times, and (horror) The New Yorker. Editors seem either to be idiots or unemployed.

Rob

-- Rob Lingelbach rob@colorist.org http://www.colorist.org/robhome.html

Steve VanSlyck wrote:

Pick up and examine any _professionally_ published book, magazine, or newspaper and you won't find double spaces,

OTOH, many _professional_ publishing systems _do_ use different spacing between periods and the beginning of a new sentence. The space is neither one nor two spaces, but intermediate. Some desktop publishing systems use an em space between sentences and an en space between words. IBM's Script/VS used two spaces on monospace font devices (like older printers).

Declaring this to be right or wrong based on your preference is hardly reasonable. You will find professionally produced documents with a variety of standards. Not all will satisfy the CMS reference you provided. In fact, my copy of the CMS (13th ed.) states that the spacing between words and sentences can be varied according to design and notes the standards for marking up text to increase or decrease spacing between words. Full justification of text requires variable spacing.

Mike

I'm not talking about systems, I'm talking about National Geographic. Scientific American. Time. Newsweek. &c.

"The view at /CMOS/ is that there is no reason for two spaces after a period in /published/ work. Some people, however---my colleagues included---prefer it, relegating this preference to their personal correspondence and notes. I've noticed in old American books printed in the few decades before and after the turn of the last century (ca. 1870--1930 at least) that there seemed to be a trend in publishing to use extra space (sometimes quite a bit of it) after periods. And many people were taught to use that extra space in typing class (I was). But introducing two spaces after the period causes problems: (1) it is inefficient, requiring an extra keystroke for every sentence; (2) even if a program is set to automatically put an extra space after a period, such automation is never foolproof; (3) there is no proof that an extra space actually improves readability---as your comment suggests, it's probably just a matter of familiarity (Who knows? perhaps it's actually more efficient to read with less regard for sentences as individual units of thought---many centuries ago, for example in ancient Greece, there were no spaces even between words, and no punctuation); (4) two spaces are harder to control for than one in electronic documents (I find that the earmark of a document that imposes a two-space rule is a smattering of instances of both three spaces and one space after a period, and two spaces in the middle of sentences); and (5) two spaces can cause problems with line breaks in certain programs.

So, in our efficient, modern world, I think there is no room for two spaces after a period. In the opinion of this particular copyeditor, this is a good thing."

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/CMS_FAQ/OneSpaceorTwo/OneSpaceorTwo03.ht...

Michael Daly wrote:

Steve VanSlyck wrote:

...

Pick up and examine any _professionally_ published book, magazine, or newspaper and you won't find double spaces.