Johnny Rosenberg wrote: > As a non English speaking person that's very interesting. In Swedish > there has never been an extra space required and I started to learn > English at school in 1975, and nobody ever mentioned an extra space. > So exactly when did this change from being required to NOT being > required? > > On the other hand, in 1975 we didn't use computers at school so maybe > that's why they didn't mention anything about spaces…
The two spaces after a full stop thing links way back to the days of typewriters, and a need for an em-dash sized space after the full stop. It wasn't actually a requirement of the English language... just a standard used by typists (using typewriters that used monospaced fonts), that was influenced by traditional typesetting standards and norms from the 19th century. > And I am curious about another thing as well: I have noticed that many > people writing in English adds an extra space right before a ”!” and a > ”?”, which is very ugly and at least in Swedish very wrong. Has that > been required too in the past? This also links back to the days of typewriters, and something called "French spacing" which for reasons only truly known by people at the time, inserted extra single spaces before and after punctuation marks. Depending on who you consult on it, the gradual change to single space after a full stop started anytime from the 1950s to the 1990s. The real trend is most noticeable with the more common use of variable width fonts and computers with office and DTP apps. Anyone who took traditional typing classes in school, using real typewriters (like me) were likely taught to double-space after a full stop. The habit stuck, and I still do it even in my emails :-) C. -- Clayton Cornell [email protected] OpenOffice.org Documentation Project co-lead Sun Microsystems, Hamburg, Germany --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
