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

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

#61
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interesting! where were you educated (mine was private school, gen X, SW England)? Is this a class thing, or a regional thing, or a generational thing, or what?

State - SW England & Catholic - NE Scotland. I'm not sure? But I first started (outside of school) on a typewriter, and terminals were all fixed width (Acorn, Amiga, BBC) - which the argument goes is where it came from (although the typesetting comment by @OliverJones suggests otherwise). I wonder if perhaps it was just a function of the teacher you had? The world was less connected (even now parts of education are i…

I had an Acorn Atom (still have it, though I can't get it working any more). Nothing in there suggested 2 spaces after a full stop ;) And the manual used to talk about the "computer programme"!

I guess it's down to teacher and style, as you say. I find it interesting that I never met this until post 2000 internet forums with Americans, though. I wonder how widespread it is.

And like tabs vs spaces, I get that there's a "this is the way" answer. Tabs are the right answer, and anyone who says spaces is an idiot. But 2 spaces after a full stop is clearly the right way, but I'm buggered if I can bring myself to do that ;)

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

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would advocate that the extra spacing should be handled at presentation time. Not as part of the content itself. TeX/LaTeX attempts to do this, IIRC. I know there are sigils to force that one way or the other when it guesses wrong. I'm a 2-spacer, being of a certain age and having learned to type in school on an actual typewriter. I'm also heavily invested in the Web, and I get that multiple spaces are folded int…

> I'm a 2-spacer, being of a certain age and having learned to type in school on an actual typewriter. Yes, from posts with double-spaces I can usually tell that the author is over a certain age (I would put them at baby-boomer or near baby-boomer). I am guilty of having been taught that way when taking Typing class in school as well. I have since dropped it though since we no longer live in a monospace world (I know…

I'm fine with proportionally spaced fonts when not coding. I'm also in love with extra space at the end of sentences; HTML based displays took the easy way out, there.
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