From: Jim Allan (jallan@smrtytrek.com)
Date: Mon Jul 07 2003 - 16:57:29 EDT
Michael Everson posted:
> Typists were taught to do it generally, but the origin of the
> practice is to assist the typesetters.
No so. It predates typewriters and one can see this style in the
typography in many books of the Victorian era and the early decades of
the twentieth century.
From Robert Bringhurst's _Typographic Manual of Style_, pp. 28-30:
<< 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. Generation of twentieth-centry 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 puctuation. 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 texts 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. >>
For discussion of when double spacing after a period might still be good
practice see
http://desktoppub.about.com/library/weekly/blrules-spaces.htm and
http://www.evolt.org/article/Two_Spaces_After_a_Period_Isn_t_Dead_Yet/25/213/?format=print.
Jim Allan
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