On Jul 6, 2004, at 1:05 PM, Aaron Sherber wrote:
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.
Again with the non-sequitur. Yes, a monospace font has more extra space between letters. That is why the space character is narrower in a proportionally spaced font. But this applies equally to inter-word space and inter-sentence space.
The argument for double-spacing between sentences is that the inter-sentence gap needs to be larger than the inter-word gap. To single-space after a period makes the inter-word gap and the inter-sentence gap identical. You have offered an argument for why that gap can be smaller in proportionally spaced type, but it applies equally to either kind of space. It says nothing about whether there needs to be a distinction between the two.
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Thanks for the follow-up, Aaron. It's good to hear from the other side. I suppose I should acknowledge openly that there is of course a raging debate about this. When I state my own position, I state it. I don't mean to imply that there aren't plenty who disagree, and I figured the reference to "conventional wisdom" was sufficient to indicate that mine is a minority position. Nevertheless, I stand by that position completely.
By the way, although I bristle at the errant insistence by certain experts (and "experts") that double-spacing after a sentence is categorically wrong, I don't myself think it's categorically right. My quarrel is with the false logic that the one-space partisans put forth to defend their position, not with the one-space practice itself. Personally, I tend to be haphazard in my own spacing, and I don't think it's all that important. There are a great many other issues in typography which don't get nearly the pet-peeve attention which I think are far more relevant to readability (eg, a proper ratio of line-spacing to column width, choosing typestyles inappropriate to context, inattention to bad line breaks, etc.).
Another point worth noting: Those same readability studies which demonstrated that double-spacing between sentences increases comprehension also found several other helpful techniques, including the limited use of all-caps to emphasize key words (but not entire phrases). I certainly wouldn't advocate that, so obviously I don't think that readability is everything.
mdl
P.S. Aaron also wrote:
[...] when we use proportionately spaced fonts in Word or wherever, we are essentially mimicking what professional typesetters do.
Would that it were so!
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