"K Viltersten" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > 2. You should use two spaces after a sentence-ending period. > > For heavens sake, why? I've always been obstructed by the double > blanks but tolerated them. Now, that i read that > it actually is a recommendation, i need to ask about the purpose.
AFAICT from modern publications (which nevertheless get many other things wrong, such as how f and i are handled when they appear in sequence), this practice has mostly been eschewed, thankfully. In "The Elements of Typographical Style", by Robert Bringhurst, has this to say (section 2.1.4 of version 3.0): In the nineteenth century, which was a dark and inflationary age in typography and type design, many compositors were encouraged to stuff extra space between sentences. Generations of twentieth-century typists were then taught to do the same, by hitting the spacebar twice after every period. Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit. As a general rule, no more than a single space is required after a period, colon or any other mark of punctuation. Larger spaces (e.g., en spaces) are _themselves_ punctuation. He goes on to note that this does not apply to setting languages such as classical Latin or Greek, or other circumstances in which sentences begin with lowercase letters, where the extra space is actually helpful. The Elements of Typographical Style (much like Strunk & White) is not gospel, but is written by a highly experienced typesetter, and is chock full of very sound advice. Personally, I find double-spacing to be an abomination. However, there are some practical issues to note. One is that some editors (notably vi) only recognize a period as ending a sentence if they are followed by two spaces. This may be the default for Emacs as well (I don't do much "moving by sentence" in Emacs). For this reason, the GNU Coding Guidelines recommend ensuring that all periods in comments and in plaintext documentation have periods. Knuth's typesetting program, Τεχ, in its default "plain" format (and in the popular Laτεχ format as well), will add extra space at the ends of sentences automatically (I always disable this functionality when I write for either of those; I believe the command is "\frenchspacing"). -- Micah J. Cowan Programmer, musician, typesetting enthusiast, gamer... http://micah.cowan.name/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
