31–40 of 174 posts
It seems that the reason it's wrong is that typographers say it is. The author has not given an actual reason , other than appeal to authority. I will continue to double-space until I'm dead.
> I will continue to double-space until I'm dead.
In general, modern typesetting software (and/or fonts) should be able to properly set the width of spaces between sentences to be slightly wider than than those between words. Unfortunately, TeX is the only common typesetter I know that does this.
Articles with the word "ever" in the title: Beware their gross generalizations, lack of gray area, and hasty conclusions.
Articles with both the words "never" and "ever" in the title: Never, ever read them. (oops)
It seems that the reason it's wrong is that typographers say it is. The author has not given an actual reason , other than appeal to authority. I will continue to double-space until I'm dead.
> I will continue to double-space until I'm dead. Do you have a reason for doing so?
It seems that the reason it's wrong is that typographers say it is. The author has not given an actual reason , other than appeal to authority. I will continue to double-space until I'm dead.
> I will continue to double-space until I'm dead. Do you have a reason for doing so?
He's amusingly wrong in his certainty that everybody else is wrong. Two spaces grew out of a typographic convention of using a 1.5-width space that was favored by typesetters for proportional typespaces because typewriters didn't have half-width spaces represented on their keyboards. The actually "correct" approach would be 1.5-character width spaces, because even in proportional typefaces a little extra space serves…
Being a supposed technology columnist, he should have been aware that yes, text is still often rendered in monospace fonts. His grasp of history is just horribly wrong: "Monospaced fonts went out in the 1970s. First electric typewriters and then computers began to offer people ways to create text using proportional fonts." He's talking about exotic hardware that was used by approximately no one.
Being a supposed technology columnist, he should also have done some research to find out how single and double spaces are rendered by word processors and email clients. Double-spacing is perfectly fine if word processors know what two spaces after a period mean and render it appropriately. I was taught that they do, so for me, double-spacing after a period seems like the perfect solution: double-spacing is the least bad solution for monospace fonts, and for proportional fonts, a double-space after a period will automatically be rendered correctly. If he wanted to do an actual service for his readers, he could have told us whether that is true or not. Since he is, you know, a technology columnist. Doesn't that title imply something beyond the ability to review smart phones?