On Oct 21, 2011, at 6:58 AM, Helge Hafting wrote:
LaTeX knows that there should be more space after a period, in some languages. (And no such thing in some other languages).
Today, many (most?) typographers recommend just a single word space between sentences, except in languages where sentences begin with a lower case letter. Robert Bringhurst, the author of The Elements of Typographic Style, a book widely regarded as the typographer's bible, writes:
In the nineteenth century, 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. As a general rule, no more than a single space is required after a period, a colon or any other mark of punctuation. Larger spaces (e.g., en spaces) are themselves punctuation. The rule is usually altered, however, when setting classical Latin and Greek, Romanized Sanskrit, phonetics or other kinds of text in which sentences begin with lowercase letters. In the absence of a capital, a full en space (M/2) between sentences will generally be welcome.
I normally use the command \frenchspacing in the preamble to stop LaTeX from adding any extra space between sentences.
Bruce
