On Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:49:55 -0500 Came this utterance formulated by James Knott to my mailbox:
> 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? > > > I've always been in the habit of adding an extra space between > sentences. It simply looks better, because each sentence stands out > by itself. When you get into type setting, there's a whole list of > rules for making text look right. Back when metal type was used, > there were spaces called N quads and M quads. They were the same with > as the letter, but didn't print. You'd use an N quad between words in > a sentence and M quads between sentences. IIUC TeX and LaTeX work by taking the sentence ending space and automatically replacing it with an em space when and where appropriate. They simply ignore two spaces (and empty paragraphs as well). -- Michael "Uncle Cosmo, why do they call this a word processor?" "It's simple, Skyler. You've seen what food processors do to food, right?" --- Jeff MacNelly in "Shoe" --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
