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Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

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Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#141

Post by apotheon »

isleyaardvark wrote: post #71
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #22

Amusing: his argument is that authorities say to use one, so use one. He then refutes arguments by others that they learned to use two spaces from their authorities, so they do. "That's wrong!" he says. There is no argument of value in this article.

But he also gives the reasons why current authorities say one, and previous authorities say two - all due to the aesthetics and readability of spaces with proportional typesetting versus monospaced type. The reasons are fairly subjective, but I don't see why so many here are dismissing them simply as pure arguments from authority.

No -- he gives the reasons he agrees with those authorities. That's not the same as those authorities' reasons.

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#142

Post by pg »

apotheon wrote: post #2

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…

Interesting data point when a comment on a forum so clearly surpasses an article written by a professional writer for an online publication.

This, ultimately, is why journalism is losing. The stuff the pros write is no better than the stuff other people write for free in blog posts and comments on forums.

Which is why paywalls don't work. The stuff behind them isn't better enough that readers will pay to get at it.

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#143

Post by apotheon »

jawee wrote: post #125
njharman wrote: post #63

I had a real hard time determining if this article was serious or a sarcastic rant against people who get overwrought on trivialities. >in the same way that waiters know that the salad fork goes to the left of the dinner fork and fashion designers know to put men's shirt buttons on the right and women's on the left. Those are both examples of arbitrary decisions carried forward by inertia and slavish adherence to dog…

>these unquoted/unspecified typographers There are quotes from several specified typographers and style manuals. I do not understand why they are unquoted and unspecified. See especially paragraphs five, six, and eight.

There are quotes from two typographers (less than "several" by my estimation), and they don't even give meaningful support for their positions. They just claim to be right.

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#144

Post by burgerbrain »

isleyaardvark wrote: post #119
burgerbrain wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt your books display themselves in monospaced fonts. My technical literature more often than not does.

That's my point. Most books don't use monospaced fonts, which was the case given in the article for instances where you'd use two spaces. You don't often see monotype in emails you send, or word processors, or newspapers, or even (as pointed out earlier) in web pages. If you're writing a technical manual, then you may want to use two spaces, but really isn't that something that would be handled by the printer?

"You don't often see monotype in emails..."

Well, maybe you don't... and most technical manuals I see, use, and write are never printed.

"(as pointed out earlier) in web pages."

Well there it doesn't matter in the slightest. You might as well just use double-spaces and not bother yourself to change your habit.

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#145

Post by bane »

apotheon wrote: post #139
bane wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't given a reason for double spacing either (I like to triple space to make extra sure).

Try these reasons for two-space sentence separation (and against the Slate single-space argument): http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.014.10.05.57

I actually do have one:

Double space sentence delimiters simplify sentence tokenization into an almost trivial exercise in most cases. Single space delimiters make sentence tokenization actually quite hard.

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#146

Post by apotheon »

haberman wrote: post #100

I've used two spaces for a while now. It just feels right that sentences have more space between them than "Mr." has after it. But there's one annoying, persistent browser bug that cramps my style. If a line wraps after the first of two spaces, the second space will be on the next line, which looks terrible: http://i.imgur.com/MksV7.png

That's an edge-case of the way that person's software preserves multiple spaces by force in browsers; it replaces the second of two spaces between sentences in the source with a similar, non-breaking space. Use the `diff` command (if you're on a real OS) to compare; you'll see the two spaces are not actually duplicates of the same character code in the font used on that page.

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#147

Post by apotheon »

alanfalcon wrote: post #108
bryanlarsen wrote: post #15

HTML removes extra spaces. I used a double space there, but you only see a single space. Since much of what people read these days is HTML, that's going to become what people expect to see, so I expect single spacing to become the standard. I bet that will have more of an effect on changing people's minds than "expert" opinions.

How so when no published material uses a double space? Did anyone notice and change their approach because of it? Why should HTML rendering change that? People double space because that is what they were taught. People single space because that is what they were taught. Few people make the effort to change their ways for something they perceive as trivial and which they don't even notice while reading every single da…

I think that, outside of journalism, very few people were "taught" single spacing. I suspect that mostly, non-journalists who use single spacing between sentences are people who learned by reading tweets, SMS messages, and Facebook pages.

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#148

Post by apotheon »

pg wrote: post #142
apotheon wrote: post #2

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…

Interesting data point when a comment on a forum so clearly surpasses an article written by a professional writer for an online publication. This, ultimately, is why journalism is losing. The stuff the pros write is no better than the stuff other people write for free in blog posts and comments on forums. Which is why paywalls don't work. The stuff behind them isn't better enough that readers will pay to get at it.

I have bad news for you: I'm a professional writer.

I just happen to be much better at it than that hack, even though he probably gets paid more. Of course, the reason he (probably) gets paid more is that he writes for Slate, while I write for TechRepublic. Since he's supposed to be a technology writer for Slate, and I'm basically any kind of writer for TR (specifically security, open source issues, and programming, but that's not relevant in this case), you can pretty much bet money that I know more about the subjects our writings have in common than him, despite the fact he probably gets paid more for his ignorance than I do for my knowledge.

So it goes.

In any case, I really appreciate the implicit compliment, despite the fact this comment at HN was very much off the cuff and not among my best recent writings. I agree it's better than the Slate piece, though perhaps primarily because the Slate writer didn't set the bar very high.

By the way, I scraped together a longer, more in-depth version of my HN comment that you liked for my personal devlog:

http://blogstrapping.com/?page=2011.014.10.05.57

I think it's better written than my HN comment, too.

edit: Of course, I became a professional writer by making comments in discussions at TechRepublic that people liked, so maybe I don't qualify as the type of "professional writer" you meant to address.

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#149

Post by apotheon »

terryjsmith wrote: post #36

If the MLA says one space then it has changed since I was in school (~10 years ago). We were always told to use a double space at the end of a sentence and while he links to the Chicago MLA, the actual MLA website also eludes to the fact that it used to be two spaces: http://www.mla.org/style_faq3 .

CMoS and MLA are not identical.

Re: Why you should never, ever use two spaces after a period

#150

Post by apotheon »

burgerbrain wrote: post #89
lukev wrote: post #55

This is a trend I've noticed a lot lately on articles on typography and design - they're very light on 'why' and pretty much just invoke appeals to authority - "my design school taught me to do it this way, QED." There is a good reason to use one space, and that is that when you're typing, you're only creating text, not typesetting. Software does the typesetting now, and will automatically space out sentences in a wa…

"There is a good reason to use double spaces, and that is that when you're typing, you're only creating text, not typesetting. Software does the typesetting now, and will automatically space out sentences in a way that looks right. You don't need to change your habits, because computers work for _you_" Counter-argument, in the form of a strategic rewording.

> There is a good reason to use two spaces, and that is that when you're typing, you're only creating text, not typesetting. Software does the typesetting now, and will automatically space out sentences in a way that looks right. Furthermore, it is easier for software to detect two adjacent space characters than to guess at where you meant to put a space at the end of a sentence and where you meant to put a space after an abbreviation. You don't need to change your habits, because computers work for you, but using two spaces between sentences helps them do their work sometimes. Also, many people still use monospace fonts for many purposes.

improved version

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