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Spacing between sentences, the meaning of life, and the man in the moon
Subject:Spacing between sentences, the meaning of life, and the man in the moon From:"Michael West" <mike -dot- west -at- bigpond -dot- com> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Fri, 5 Nov 2010 21:55:50 +1100
It's taken me a few days find time to ponder why I always cringe when I read
here, in what I prefer to think of as a professional forum, comments about
"how many spaces" should or shouldn't separate one sentence from the next in
typeset material.
I think it's because I expect a professional technical writer to understand
the difference between typing and setting type; and setting, or composing,
type is what you're actually doing (badly or well) when you use digital
fonts on a computer.
I expect a professional tech writer to understand that there's really no
such thing as "one space" or "two spaces." Character spacing is measured,
not counted. There is an en space, an em space, a triple em space, and so
on; but the phrase "two spaces" describes nothing definite. It means tapping
the space bar twice and devil take the hindmost. It's nebulous, and as
people paid to deal in the specific and the concrete, we shouldn't mess with
it.
To such people I would say this. If your readers have trouble knowing when
they've arrived at the end of a sentence, it's very likely that they are
reading weak, rambling, indecisive sentences. An extra "space" or two is not
going to help much with that.
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