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Subject:Re: Spaces after full stop From:"Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Mon, 8 Oct 2007 13:59:22 -0700
Up until the 1970's (the last time I worked with typeset
documents),
the printing standard was 1.5 spaces following a colon or
the end
of a sentence, a practice that was referred to as "French
spacing."
Two spaces was the standard for "French spacing" in
typewritten
manuscripts that would be set, because it provided a visual
cue to
the setters that enabled them to work quickly without having
to
read everything they set (and, of course, because you can't
lay
down 1.5 spaces with a manual typewriter).
The first electronic typesetting system I worked with
distinguished
between a "period," which was automatically followed by 1.5
spaces,
and a "point" (as in decimal point), which was followed by
no space,
by using separate characters on a customized keyboard. The
only
circumstance in which a period/point was followed by exactly
one
space was initials, and this was achieved by using the
"point"
character followed by a hard (typed) space. This was all
pre-DTP,
of course.
Gene Kim-Eng
----- Original Message -----
From: <brianlindgren -at- aol -dot- com>
To: <lt34 -at- csus -dot- edu>; <dossy -at- panoptic -dot- com>;
<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Sent: Monday, October 08, 2007 12:16 PM
Subject: Re: Spaces after full stop
> Actually, typesetting had the rule of a single space after
> a period. It was typewriting that had two spaces -- again,
> because of the monotype issue (Courier font in the case of
> a typewriter).
>
> Not sure about the rule for old hot type typesetting, but
> for all electronic typesetting, the rule was to use a
> single space after punctuation.
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