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One or two spaces after a period?
Topic Started: Mar 26 2015, 12:37 AM (403 Views)
Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
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http://www.cultofpedagogy.com/two-spaces-after-period/
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html

I for one think that neither single nor double space is correct.

A good typesetting system has two kinds of spaces: Inter-word space, and end-of-sentence space, with the latter being a little (around 33%) larger than the former. Of course these spaces have no fixed widths but need to be able to shrink and grow a little to allow for paragraph justification.

After a period that does not end a sentence (such as in "Dr. GeorgeK said") you want an inter-word space not an end-of-sentence space. It always annoys me if I see an end-of-sentence space after an abbreviation.

Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Catseye
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Pisa-Carp
I take your point; I like the idea of the end-of-sentence space being larger than the interword space but not necessarily twice as large. I feel pretty strongly about having a perceptibly larger end-of-sentence space, though.

Maybe it's too hard to program spacing after a within-sentence versus end-of-sentence. In that case, I could live with an end-of-sentence space within a sentence a lot easier than a single space at the end of the sentence.
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Klaus
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Unicode defines many different space characters, but I'm not sure whether these are very sensible for type setting, since the actual spacing depends on the whole paragraph. The spacing also depends on the characters; for instance, an "f" in italic at the end of a word requires a different space than a non-italic "l". A good typesetting algorithm will try to make the spacing in each paragraph as balanced as possible.

But it can only do its job well if the writer specifies the intended meaning of the space, i.e., whether it ends a sentence, whether it is between words, whether it is after an abbreviation, and so forth.
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Copper
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The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy
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Mikhailoh
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Easily solved. 1. That is what I was taught in Business Writing.
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jon-nyc
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Cheers
Double space gets you a free period from Apple or MS.
In my defense, I was left unsupervised.
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Klaus
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Spacing matters.
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Don't get me started on kerning!
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George K
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Finally
jon-nyc
Mar 26 2015, 04:16 AM
Double space gets you a free period from Apple or MS.
My wife used to get those until she was in her early 50s.
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big al
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I habitually use two spaces at the end of a sentence because that's what I learned in high school typing class 50-some years ago.

I've seen this discussion before and I believe it was mentioned that in some places like these forums, "extra" spaces are automatically removed.

The earlier comments made me wonder if there are any word processing, publishing, or similar programs that identify a double space as the end of a sentence and adjust the spacing to yield a larger end-of-sentence space that is something other than a double space. I know other such adjustments occur because I see Microsoft Word sometimes lengthening a hyphen after I have typed one followed by a space.

The demands of efficiency are sometimes contrary to those of aesthetics. Where you come down on questions like this perhaps says something about which you value more.

Big Al
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Klaus
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big al
Mar 26 2015, 05:18 AM
The earlier comments made me wonder if there are any word processing, publishing, or similar programs that identify a double space as the end of a sentence and adjust the spacing to yield a larger end-of-sentence space that is something other than a double space.
Yes.

LaTeX, for instance, doesn't care how much whitespace you insert between words or sentences. There is no difference between 1, 2, or 500 whitespaces.
The default rule for LaTeX is that if the character before a period is a lower-case letter, then it inserts an end-of-sentence space, otherwise an inter-word space.
You can change that behavior by inserting a backslash before a space, e.g., one would write "Mr.\ BigAl". You can also insert a space but mark it as a bad place to insert a line break by "~", such as in "It's 10~inches long!"
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Axtremus
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