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there is a reason - for one space after a period

Posted: Oct 3rd, 2018 - 12:08 am In Reply to: One space after a period, not two is so stupid and - makes it harder to read. SM

I was a typesetter in a pre-MT life, and the reason for two spaces was that typewriters lacked the ability to control letter and sentence spacing, so the only way to create more space between sentences than letters was to add a whole manual space. Theoretically, the need for that was eliminated with digital fonts and automatic spacing, and the extra space was expected to die out rather quickly. Old habits die hard, however (like docs insisting on all caps when bold is available, etc.). Also, most digital fonts don't actually seem to leave enough space between sentences. That spacing seems to have gotten smaller since the advent of PCs and I suspect the spacing was actually closed up deliberately because people just refused to stop using two spaces and that was too much. Anyway, here's a link to an article that explains the situation very well.

LINK/URL: there is a reason

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One space after a period, not two is so stupid and - makes it harder to read. SM (Views: 754, 2018-10-02, 5:54 pm)
- there is a reason - for one space after a period
  - P S - and correction (Views: 752, 2018-10-03, 12:13 am)
    - And we professional typesetters call ourselves - typographers nm (Views: 460, 2018-10-03, 8:25 am)
  - and duh - the actual link (Views: 501, 2018-10-03, 12:15 am)
- Spaced - Out (Views: 427, 2018-10-04, 12:35 am)