The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)
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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)
#2[deleted]
Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)
#3monospace 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 themselves to type otherwise, and it’s probably a slight legibility help in docstrings and latex source.
edit: as i edit this on my phone i realize that one place this doesn’t work is on an on-screen keyboard. There, typing the second space too quickly usually inserts another period!
Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)
#4monospace 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…
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.
Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)
#5I'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 information transfer. This standard does not work well for everyone. It’s why I thought, for a long time, that I didn’t like books. I wasn’t good at the mechanics of reading. When I found text-to-speech programs and actual audiobooks, it was like finally seeing the turtle in one of those Magic Eye posters that everyone else at the party saw hours ago.
===
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 information transfer. This standard does not work well for everyone. It’s why I thought, for a long time, that I didn’t like books. I wasn’t good at the mechanics of reading. When I found text-to-speech programs and actual audiobooks, it was like finally seeing the turtle in one of those Magic Eye posters that everyone else at the party saw hours ago.
Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)
#6monospace 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…
For me two spaces in fixed-width fonts is too jarring, as the spaces themselves are significantly wider than in proportional fonts (relative to average letter width), and also the period glyph already adds horizontal space.
For proportional fonts, on the other hand, two spaces would help the layout engine to distinguish between the end of a sentence and other uses of period-followed-by-space (abbreviations, mostly).
Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)
#7Not that civilization would settle on such a thing to a degree where this would be dependable, but it would certainly help machine processing of text to understand that the two spaces indicates a new sentence, while some abbreviation with a period in it, then a space, does not represent the last word in a sentence.
I still use two spaces at the end of a sentence in text messages. Pry them from my cold dead thumbs, etc.
Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)
#8monospace 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…
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.
Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)
#9I'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.
Re: The Scientific Case for Two Spaces After a Period (2018)
#10monospace 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…
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.