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The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)

#11

Post by hprotagonist »

StavrosK wrote: post #8
CrazyStat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several years ago I started putting every sentence on a new line when I write LaTeX, as it makes diffs cleaner if I want to go back and compare versions of a document.

I do the same but I noticed it feels very weird to write like that, it feels much more staccato, as if there's a bigger pause between each sentence. Nowadays I write paragraphs normally and then split the lines afterwards.

we’re all conditioned by twitter now, it should be fine! /s

Now that you mention it though i bet there’s an easy macro to do this in emacs ...

Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)

#13

Post by falcolas »

xiwenc wrote: post #5

I'm surprised the article did not show the difference. Here it is: 1 space after period === I’ve written before about the effect of color gradients on reading, and how it goes against the findings of science that our words should be in a single color, usually black and usually on a near-white background, and usually presented in lines of a certain length. This is all a matter of tradition and style, not optimal infor…

Part of the problem is that the period is overloaded. Massively overloaded. And not in a BNF (or other regular syntax) style that makes sentence breaks mechanically identifiable.

Even a period-space-capital method is far from foolproof, Mr. Anderson.

Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)

#14

Post by TheRealSteel »

downrightmike wrote: post #9
xiwenc wrote: post #5

I'm surprised the article did not show the difference. Here it is: 1 space after period === I’ve written before about the effect of color gradients on reading, and how it goes against the findings of science that our words should be in a single color, usually black and usually on a near-white background, and usually presented in lines of a certain length. This is all a matter of tradition and style, not optimal infor…

The extra space appears to let the sentence or thought stand on it's own. In school K-12 I was taught two spaces. College said only one.

Yep, in casual text conversations (i.e. chatting with friends) I sometimes use extra spaces between words or sentences as a stylistic choice to express tone.

Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)

#15

Post by hprotagonist »

layer8 wrote: post #10
CrazyStat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several years ago I started putting every sentence on a new line when I write LaTeX, as it makes diffs cleaner if I want to go back and compare versions of a document.

I do the same in source documentation, to limit the portion that has to be reformatted when changing something in the middle.

i’d have trouble keeping line length limits in docstrings.

Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)

#16

Post by Rygian »

hprotagonist wrote: post #3

monospace source text: two spaces. WYSIWYG or compiled final output: the layout engine knows how to adjust keming better than i do, and will strip out or adjust space distances to look “right” no matter how many spaces I type. So i might as well type two and maintain hand memory consistency. So as far as i’m concerned, it’s a no-op in practice. For myself i learned two-space long ago, my hands are unlikely to retrain…

Somewhat amused by the "keming" you refer to. I assume it's tongue-in-cheek. :-)

Double-space into period is a customizable feature of on-screen keyboards (at least Gboard).

Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)

#17

Post by chrisfinazzo »

downrightmike wrote: post #9
xiwenc wrote: post #5

I'm surprised the article did not show the difference. Here it is: 1 space after period === I’ve written before about the effect of color gradients on reading, and how it goes against the findings of science that our words should be in a single color, usually black and usually on a near-white background, and usually presented in lines of a certain length. This is all a matter of tradition and style, not optimal infor…

The extra space appears to let the sentence or thought stand on it's own. In school K-12 I was taught two spaces. College said only one.

For my district, roughly K-8 encouraged 2 spaces but changed once I got to HS. I don't know if this was an artifact of teaching us to create bibliographies and citations in MLA Style or just for ease of editing.

College and Grad School either didn't care or vehemently adhered to 1 space.

APA Style and its variants seems reasonable to me, if only for the reason that it corrects a major flaw in AP - the lack of a serial comma.

Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)

#18

Post by throwaway2245 »

xiwenc wrote: post #5

I'm surprised the article did not show the difference. Here it is: 1 space after period === I’ve written before about the effect of color gradients on reading, and how it goes against the findings of science that our words should be in a single color, usually black and usually on a near-white background, and usually presented in lines of a certain length. This is all a matter of tradition and style, not optimal infor…

> Personally I think the extra space does improve readability.

In the way that I read, I find that two spaces here highlights the first word(s) of the sentence, and that makes it much slower for me to parse the meaning of the sentence as a whole.

"I've written before about", "This", "This", "It's why I thought", "I", "When I found" - usually I want to skip over these words and get to the meaning: not have them be identified as a point of focus.

Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)

#19

Post by hprotagonist »

Rygian wrote: post #16
hprotagonist wrote: post #3

monospace source text: two spaces. WYSIWYG or compiled final output: the layout engine knows how to adjust keming better than i do, and will strip out or adjust space distances to look “right” no matter how many spaces I type. So i might as well type two and maintain hand memory consistency. So as far as i’m concerned, it’s a no-op in practice. For myself i learned two-space long ago, my hands are unlikely to retrain…

Somewhat amused by the "keming" you refer to. I assume it's tongue-in-cheek. :-) Double-space into period is a customizable feature of on-screen keyboards (at least Gboard).

yea that was an intentional typo :)

Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)

#20

Post by magicalhippo »

StavrosK wrote: post #8
CrazyStat wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several years ago I started putting every sentence on a new line when I write LaTeX, as it makes diffs cleaner if I want to go back and compare versions of a document.

I do the same but I noticed it feels very weird to write like that, it feels much more staccato, as if there's a bigger pause between each sentence. Nowadays I write paragraphs normally and then split the lines afterwards.

For the most part I do the same when writing emails.

Appears to be a higher chance of people reading them that way.

I don't write a lot of fluff though, and usually have two or three trimming passes before sending.

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