At 03:31 PM 07/06/2004, Mark D Lew wrote: >The notion that proportionally spaced fonts render the extra space >unnecessary is a non-sequitur at best, and possibly even backward. >Whatever it is that might make an extra space after a period desirable >in a monospace font, it is no less desirable in a proportionally spaced >font.
This is not entirely accurate. It is true, as Mark points out, that each character in a monospaced font takes up the same amount of horizontal space, but it does not *fill* that space evenly. A string of characters typed in a monospace font will generally include much more whitespace than the same string in a proportionately spaced font; letters in a proportionately spaced font sit closer together. A lowercase 'i', for example, includes lots of whitespace in Courier and much less in Times. The same is true of a period, which in Courier has much more space between it and the letter which precedes it than in Times.
In a monospaced font, the extra space after a period helps the sentence space stand out from all of the other space already in the sentence. Because proportionately spaced fonts have much of this whitespace already taken out, extra sentence space is not needed.
>So why the change? It's undeniably true that typing habits have >changed, and it does seem to correspond to the use of proportionally >spaced fonts. What's the correlation?
The correlation is that throughout the 20th century, typesetters (working in letterpress, linotype, electronic methods, etc.) have always used just a single space after a period with their proportionately spaced fonts. Typing habits have changed because when we use proportionately spaced fonts in Word or wherever, we are essentially mimicking what professional typesetters do. You can confirm that single-space is the norm in professional typesetting by looking at almost any book or magazine from the last hundred years.
Robert Bringhurst, in his excellent "The Elements of Typographic Style", says:
"In the nineteenth century, which which was a dark and inflationary age in typography and type design, many compositors were encouraged to stuff extra space between sentences. Generations of twentieth-century typists were then taught to do the same, by hitting the spacebar twice after every period. Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit. "
The prose is a bit sarcastic, but the point is valid.
Aaron.
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