On 6 Jul 2004 at 12:31, Mark D Lew wrote: > David Fenton raised the issue of proportional-spaced fonts. The > conventional wisdom states that the double-space after a period is > needed in a monospace font but is not needed in a proportionally > spaced font. Do a Google search for something like "double space > period proportional monospace" and you'll find any number of style > guides telling you that. Most of them will explain that whereas in a > monospace font the extra space is required to better separate > sentences, in a proportionally spaced font it's not necessary because > the space is automatically built in. > > The problem with this explanation is that it is false.
Well, I didn't argue for that explanation, as it's not the one *I* was given when the issue first came up for me (in the early 90s). I was told that with proportional spaced fonts, fully justified text will have variable widths for the spaces between words and sentences, so adding an extra space would simply mess up the intra-line spacing in justification. Of course, fully justified text is completely out of style these days, mostly because it takes sophisticated algorithms and proper hyphenation to make it come out right, and most word processors simply aren't up to the task, and produce horridly ugly justification (especially for narrow line widths). So, while the explanation you cite may be false, it's not the one that I think was the most common back in the day when the switch was on from monospaced to proportional fonts in our personal printers. -- David W. Fenton http://www.bway.net/~dfenton David Fenton Associates http://www.bway.net/~dfassoc _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
