At 05:29 PM 07/06/2004, Mark D Lew wrote: >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.
You're mostly right. I cut out from my original email another related idea, which is that the period in any typeface almost has the effect of being space itself, since there is so much whitespace which sits on top of the character. The idea is that sentence space ought to *look* slightly wider than word space, to set off sentences more. In monospaced fonts, this is accomplished with a double space, since there is so much space inherent in the font. In proportionately spaced fonts, the space which comes with (i.e., above) the period combines with the word space which follows to give the appearance of being slightly wider than word space alone. This is the part of the non sequitur that is missing.
>The argument for double-spacing between sentences is that the >inter-sentence gap needs to be larger than the inter-word gap.
Needs to *look* wider -- see above. (And yes, I know this doesn't quite apply to ! and ?, but there you are. <g>)
>I suppose I should acknowledge openly that there is of course a >raging debate about this.
If by "this" you mean double-spacing in monospaced fonts, then yes -- and "raging" may be too mellow a word. <g> But I think single-spacing in proportionately spaced fonts is an established rule. At least it is among typesetters and printers, and I think there's no reason for ordinary typists not to follow.
>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.
With all due respect, Mark, I have training and experience as a typesetter (letterpress), and every single one of my respected teachers and all of the modern texts I have seen leave no question about the incorrectness of double-spacing after a sentence in a proportionately spaced font, unless a specific contrarian style is desired. As I said before, sometimes sentence space is made *slightly* more generous, but never as much as 2 word spaces.
>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.
Having a word in caps may help in *comprehension*, but not in *readability*. That is, is makes a key word stand out strongly from the text, but the word itself is actually less readable. When we read a word in all caps, the brain tends to process each letter singly. When we read a word in normal mixed or lowercase, the brain takes in more of the word (or the whole word) as a unit, which is faster and more efficient.
>> [...] when we use proportionately spaced fonts in Word or wherever, we >> are essentially mimicking what professional typesetters do. > >Would that it were so!
Hah! Yes, I should have said "essentially *trying* to mimic"!
Aaron.
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