On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 08:19:54PM +0100, Michael Everson wrote: > And as a book designer and publisher, I think that having large spaces after > a full stop is both unnecessary and vulgar.
As a book consumer, I know that having somewhat larger space after end-of-sentence is a MUST (at least for the texts I care about). (I summarized this in http://typophile.com/node/102394#comment-551442.) So when acting as a designer, I try to make this happen. (Fortunately, it is a default in TeX.) [[[ When analysing what TeX does, one should keep in mind that the default TeX fonts have PERIOD with no “extra right bearing”. So the “the extra space is 1⅑pt” in such a font (mentioned in http://typophile.com/node/102394#comment-551442) should be understood as the “extra right bearing at end of sentence”. Other fonts may have this extra space built-in (hindering use of PERIOD in its OTHER meanings). ]]] [ I’ve read only the beginning of http://www.heracliteanriver.com/?p=324, and this beginning matches my feelings quite well. ] Hope this helps, Ilya P.S. Of course, what we discuss here is PUBLISHING, which has only remote relationship to PLAIN TEXT with its “single/double space after PERIOD”. I’m not religious about doubling space after the period: it helps the line wrap algorithms, and algorithms for forward-sentence/backward-sentence in the text editor; that’s all. I have no opinion on whether doubling the space would help readability in monospaced fonts — my experience with such non-technical texts “I care about” is not wide enough.
