http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_spacing On Aug 23, 2008, at 2:52 PM, Benjamin Horst wrote:

On Aug 23, 2008, at 10:19 PM, Steve VanSlyck wrote: 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(a)colorist.org http://www.colorist.org/robhome.html

Steve VanSlyck wrote: 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.h… Michael Daly wrote: