Re: Extra space after punctuation marks

[Mike Dowling]

>>> On Tue, 16 Jan 96 20:02:44 -0500 (EST), address@hidden (Greg A. Woods) said:

Greg> [ On Tue, January 16, 1996 at 13:17:54 (GMT), Franck Arnaud wrote: ]
>> Subject: Re: Extra space after punctuation marks
>> 
>> In message <address@hidden> Blake McBride writes: > >
>> As you know, it is customary and proper to put extra space after >
>> punctuation marks which end sentences.
>> 
>> This is arguable. As you noted, this custom does not exist at all in some
>> other languages (eg French). Even in English, your assertion that it is
>> "proper" is debatable, I've heard that this was an old fashion custom that
>> was not considered worth using anymore in modern typography (this is hearsay
>> though, and I'd be pleased to see a definite typographical reference on
>> whether or not it is a good idea in modern typography).

Greg> I would argue that it is indeed proper, and that it is only lack of
Greg> formal training that has prevented it from being widely known.  After
Greg> all, most computer users don't have formal training in using a typewriter
Greg> keyboard.
 
I think we're missing the point.  Yes, particularly if you look at the narrow
columns of a newspaper or magazine, often there will be even less white space
after punctuation marks than between words.  Yet the spacing is presumabely
made according to some deliberate algorithm designed to maximise the ease with
which the article can be read, based presumably on heuristics aquired from
years of experience.

Personally, as a user of the emacs editor, I always place two spaces at the end
of sentences as emacs provides a nice series of commands for jumping forwards
and backwards whole sentences, or for deleting a whole sentence by pressing a
single key.  The consequence is that lout will usually include extra spacing
after a full stop, but, on those occasions when the full stop in the source
text appears at the end of a line, it won't.  In other words, the spacing that
appears in an lout formatted document is not based on anybody's idea as to what
sort of spacing makes reading easier, or even according to some sort of
convention, but instead on the accidental placing of the full stops in the
source text.

Frankly, I think this is a *very* minor point.  TeX would not do this, so the
sticklers for convention might be better advised to use TeX.  I don't even
notice the problem. Also, my guess is that "desirable" spacing is very likely
to be dependent on the line lengths anyway, so producing it would not be easy.

Personally, I place much more emphaisi on other things (scalability, ease of
mixing text and graphics, etc.).

I might add that the best solution would be for some kind soul to write a
lout-mode for emacs, a bit like auctex for TeX, in which ".\n" is always
replaced by "."  "\n" when a full stop occurs at the end of a line.

Cheers,

        Mike Dowling