> From: Stefan Monnier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Date: Mon, 24 Oct 2005 23:48:42 -0400
> Cc: [email protected], Romain Francoise <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> 
> Actually, speaking here as a francophone who may have spent too much time in
> anglophone countries, I really don't understand why this double-space thingy
> is perceived as related to language.

It's not related to the language, it's related to the culture.  The
double-space thingy is taught in the US schools (for reasons that are
a mystery to me; perhaps someone could explain them), so people coming
from that culture have double-space wired into their brains.  People
who come from other cultures, even from Britain, use a single space
after a period that ends a sentence.

> Typography doesn't have much to say about it, since this is plain "ASCII"
> text we're talking about.  I use double spaces in French as much as
> in English.  Maybe it was more customary to use double space in fixed-width
> fonts (e.g. courier on old manual typewriters) in English than in French but
> if that's the reason for the perceived difference, how relevant is that now?

It's mostly irrelevant, I think, since modern word processors do TRT
even with a single space.


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