On Fri, 16 Aug 2013 12:26:33 -0400, Felmon Davis <davisf@union.edu> wrote:
On Fri, 16 Aug 2013, Bruce Carlson wrote:An interesting observation Virgil.When I went to school, mind you it was several lifetimes ago and in the backwoods of the Australian outback so it may not be too relevant to anywhere else on the planet but, I was told to always leave a double space at the end of every sentence. That was with hand writing, before typewriters were invented, at least there were none within several hundred miles of where I grew up. These days with modern word processors I just don't bother to even try and insert two spaces at the end of sentences but I suppose I should, it certainly looks nicer and may even be proper. It would be nice if modern word processors at least provided the option of a setting to do this automatically. Perhaps it should be the default setting.(please note no double spaces used in this text) Cheers all, Bruce Carlsonthis whole discussion rather puzzles me. I'm out of it because I've never heard of a rule requiring double spaces between sentences (born and raised in the US).esthetically double space insertion annoys me when I have to edit texts but otherwise I don't notice so double spaces neither facilitate nor inhibit reading as far as I am concerned.but not to just prattle on about myself, I have pulled three texts from a shelf, two are Oxford University and one is Johns Hopkins University. no double spaces that I can discern. oh, here's one from MIT Press; no double spaces. these are somewhat recent; here's an older volume from Stanford University (1992), again, no double spacing.I gather from Brian Barker's (and others') posts that this has something to do with typewriters - is this a rule one learns by taking typewriter classes? (learned on a typewriter but can't remember if I double-spaced or not.) is it a rule applied to some special area of literature or publication?F.
I read somewhere fairly recently that double spacing between sentences was for typewriters only. Apparently in printing the normal spacing between sentences was equivalent to 1 1/4 or so spaces. One space looked wrong on a typed page and two looked better. On computers, it is theoretically possible to set the sentence spacing to mimic the normal printing spacing so double spacing is not consider good practice on a computer. Those of us who learned to type on a typewriter have to unlearn the habit.
I learned to type in the US and the double spacing was taught back in the dark ages.
-----Original Message----- From: Virgil Arrington [mailto:cuyfalls@hotmail.com] Sent: Friday, 16 August 2013 10:29 AM To: James Knott; LibreOffice Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Can't find settingI got my information from Robert Bringhurst's book "The Elements of Typographic Style."I have noticed that older books from the 19th century had wider spacing after sentence ending punctuation. Newer books, say from the mid 20th century on, seem to have narrower spacing between sentences.Virgil -----Original Message----- From: James Knott Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2013 10:22 AM To: LibreOffice Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Can't find setting Virgil Arrington wrote:The typographic standard is to only use one space between sentences with proportionally spaced fonts.In the old hand set type (which I have worked with) there were different width spaces (en & em quads), depending on where they were used. Typically, an en quad was used between words and an em quad between sentences. The names refer to the width of upper case N and M characters. So, the space between words was as wide as an N and between sentences, an M. There were also wider ones, such as double M and triple M. Typesetting machines, such as the Linotype also had provision for different width spaces.-- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted-- To unsubscribe e-mail to: users+unsubscribe@global.libreoffice.orgProblems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/users/All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
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