[il-talk] Fwd: double spacing after periods

[Glenn III]

Oh, people, don't change for other people...I for one think double spacing
looks and functions better to locate sentences in a body of text. plus it
makes sense syntactically to signify the break in a flow of words between
sentences, which are not gramatically linked like words within a single
sentence. I wasn't going to comment, but since others have; it's been a
long pet peeve to me that this went away, and journalists are biased,
because the real reason publishers don't like it is that space is money in
printing, so anything that removes space in a newspaper saves them money.
It's the same with comma rules that have gradually reduced the need for
commas (which saves space in printing, but makes sentences more unclear).

-Glenn Moore III
State Secretary,
National Federation of the Blind of Illinois
(find our calendar at nfbofillinois.org/?page_id=158)
nfb.org <http://www.nfb.org>   "Live the Life You Want"

On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 8:58 PM, Bill Reif via il-talk <il-talk at nfbnet.org>
wrote:

>  Many of us who were blind as children were taught typing using a
> typewriter and the book Touch Typing in Ten Lessons.  One of the first
> things we were taught after learning to type sentences was to "space twice
> after a period, or when the following word begins with a capital letter".
> Below is a rather passionate column from Melissa Harris that probably
> applies to us.  I suspected this was the case when the proportional font
> went away, but still notice a lot of emails that include two spaces after
> periods if I check. Those who don't see the formatting would have no reason
> to look for this change. This two-space habit will be a hard one to break
> for some.
>
> Cordially,
> Bill
>
>
>
> -------- Forwarded Message --------  Subject: Article from Chicago
> Tribune Business Section 2015 05 06  Date: Thu, 7 May 2015 18:01:28 -0400
> (EDT)  From: NFB-NEWSLINE Online <nfbnewsline at nfb.org>
> <nfbnewsline at nfb.org>  To: William B. Reif <billreif at ameritech.net>
> <billreif at ameritech.net>
>
> Chicago Confidential. One space between sentences, please Don't treat your
> writing like a double-wide trailer. One space will do.. Melissa Harris.
> Please stop putting two spaces between sentences. It makes you look like a
> dinosaur. . Yes, I will get a lot of angry letters for that last remark.
> But you really should thank me. Or your secretary should thank me. For
> those subjected to working with people who continue to hit that space bar
> twice, memorize these instructions for find and replace in Microsoft Word.
> For Mac users, hit Shift-Apple-H. For PC users, hit Ctrl-H. Hit the space
> bar twice in the first field. Hit it once in the "Replace With" field. Then
> click "Replace All. (Even though I know these shortcuts, for some reason I
> continue to go line by line fixing this mess.) Now, I wasn't always wise to
> this. Thankfully, journalism school beat it into me at a very early age.
> The bible for journalistic style, "The Associated Press Stylebook," says:
> "Use a single space after the period at the end of a sentence. Curiously,
> the oldest stylebook I have, the 1995 edition, does not contain such direct
> instructions. The most detailed explanation I could find as to why we all,
> at one time or another, have done this wrong comes from Slate. It starts
> with the typewriter, which has some deficiencies that are less obvious than
> the fact that it single-handedly gave rise to the white-out industry.
> Typewriters create monospaced type, meaning that every letter, number or
> character is given an equal space on the page. "Monospaced type gives you
> text that looks 'loose' and uneven; there's a lot of white space between
> characters and words, so it's more difficult to spot the spaces between
> sentences immediately," Farhad Manjoo wrote in Slate. "Hence the adoption
> of the two-space rule -- on a typewriter, an extra space after a sentence
> makes text easier to read. Here's the thing, though: Monospaced fonts went
> out in the 1970s. Now almost all fonts on our computers are proportional,
> meaning an "I" gets much less space than an "M. There's a lot less white
> space between characters and words, making it very easy for readers to spot
> the single space at the end of a sentence. And when there are two spaces
> there instead? Well, your copy looks like it has holes wide enough for a
> bus to drive through. Doesn't it? See. I'm right. ----------
> mmharris at tribpub.com Twitter @chiconfidential
>
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