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Sentence Spacing — 1 Space or 2?
An anonymous reader noted an epic battle is waging, the likes of which has not been seen since we all agreed that tab indenting for code was properly two spaces. He writes "Do you hit the space bar two times between sentences, or only one? I admit, I'm from the typewriter age that hits it twice, but the article has pretty much convinced me to change. My final concern: how will my word processor know the difference between an abbr. and the end of a sentence (so it can stretch the sentence for me)? I don't use a capital letter for certain technical words (even when they start a sentence), making it both harder to programmatically detect a new sentence and more important to do so. What does the Slashdot community think?"
we all agreed that tab indenting for code was properly two spaces
Say what?!?? Who made that decision? In the java world, 4 spaces is pretty standard.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Well fuck you too, then.
sic transit gloria mundi
[Insert one thousand opinions here]
The only one that matters: Is it still readable?
We have bigger problems in the world than "one space or two" ... for example, people's atrocious speling.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
I've been an editor (copy editor, proofreader, senior editor, etc.) for 10 years now. One space.
Two spaces are appropriate for typewriters and similar monospaced fonts (Courier, Monaco, Andale Mono, Consolas, Vera, Deja Vu mono)
One space for proportional fonts (Times, Helvetica, almost everything.)
Old enough to have typed on a typewriter as a child, so twice.
As an interesting note, the iPhone auto-enters a period when you double space, so the tradition is still partially alive, at least.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
It depends on the font. If it is monospaced (such as on a typewriter) it should be two spaces. If you are using a proportional font, use one space.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
It's easier for a human to determine sentence structure when sentences are set apart by two spaces, too.
I always put 2 spaces at the end of a sentence. Oddly, though, I've noticed that when I type, if it's a space between words I use my right thumb. For the end of my sentence, I use my left one. Something I didn't even realize I did until about 6 months ago, and I've been doing this for about 20 years!
What is popular is not always right; what is right is not always popular.
Seriously, dude. We're starting to worry about you.
The Mac is not a typewriter not only lays down guidelines, but explains the logic behind them, such as why punctuation should be hung, why there should not be two spaces after periods, why text set in all caps should be avoided.
If your word processor is using the whitespace that you enter, rather than typesetting your text according to whatever your style rules define, you need to get a new word processor. I tend to use two spaces at the end of a sentence, because I tend to edit text in monospace and it gives me a clear visual break between sentences, but that doesn't mean that I expect two spaces in the typeset output - even a web browser is more intelligent than that. Generally I find around 1.2-1.4 gives maximum readability. You want a slightly larger gap between sentences than between words, but double the width of a normal space gives too large a gap for easy reading. Of course, the width of a single space varies slightly from line to line when typesetting justified text.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Use LaTeX (especially if you're typing technical things), then you won't have to worry about it. Type what you mean, and let the typesetter and styles handle the details.
(I should note that if have a period followed by space that isn't a new sentence or a or a period following a capital letter that is, in which case you'll need to mark up the period with \ or @ to let it know, but these are generally fringe cases.)
R.Mo
During the early area of the internet (around 1990) i held courses and taught new users, how to use the "blank" correctly. Rules were:
People who didn't followed the rule were convicted for excessive blanking.... at least here in germany.
CU, Martin
Myself, I'm a two-space typer. My finger know a sentence-ending period is followed by two spaces and they just do it. However, in certain formats, such as HTML, white space is ignored anyway and then formatted by the format-processor (obviously a web browser in the case of HTML).
While I'm a two-spacer, the medium in which we type is largely making this a moot point.
-geis
This diverging discussion is the perfect example of why it is clear the ideal code indentation is a TAB. Set your editor to display whatever indentation width you like, don't expect to inflict that choice on everyone else. Plus it eliminates the possibility of sloppy partial indentations, and it's fewer keystrokes to boot. Win, win, win.
So I started reading this, thinking oh this sounds interesting to ponder. And then I got about halfway through the wiki entry and realized, ok no it's not. I learned with two spaces. Let me know when the discussion is done and I'll just do that.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Actually, there are multiple types of spaces in typesetting, with multiple widths. A properly typeset book will use a single em-space (a widened space approximately the width of the letter "m") between sentences and a narrower space between words. FWIW.
Ask "Should I use spaces or tabs for newlines?"
3. Hang out and serf web.
4. Discussion settled? Ask "Should there be brackets around code even if there's only one line? Like this:
If( foo == true)
a=x;
Or is it:
If( foo = true)
{
a=x;
}
sit back and surf web for a few more hours.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Ever since proportional fonts came to the desktop, people have found it hard to decide whether they are 'typing' or setting type. (eventually, in the DTP era, there was even a book, The Mac is not a Typewriter).
In typesetting, all word spaces are treated equal (except by TeX, which implements a more typewriter-like convention after periods; it also subtly modifies spacing after commas, semicolons too). This may also be a European/North American distinction, similar to the spaced-en-dash versus unspaced-em-dash convention.
TeX, and the TeXbook, are where many geeks from the CS side of the fence got their first typographic exposure and education. Some of Knuth's aesthetic decisions, like this one, do smell a bit funny to professional typographers. But his implementation of math setting is probably close to definitive (damn it Jim, I'm a typographer not a mathematician).
Wait till they find out that German uses letterspacing for boldfacing, and that it used to be normal practice to have thin spaces before punctuation, etc, etc... The study of typographic conventions is easily a life's work.
you had me at #!
<posting target-moderation="funny">
<sentence tone="exclamation">silly boy</sentence>
<sentence>you <contraction>should not</contraction> be mixing content with layout</sentence>
<sentence>use an <acronym>extended markup language</acronym> schema that removes the ambiguity and allows the viewer to determine <alternative-list><item>his</item><item>her</item></alternative-list> preferred layout and punctuation <aside>or even see it presented in <abbrev>text message</abbrev>format allowing accessibility by teenage people</aside> </sentence>
</posting>
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Discussion System prefs link: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm
Find: ".__"
Replace "._"
Find morse code W and replace with morse code A? Ahy aould I aant to do that? (bad) fake british accent?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
...was properly two spaces."
Like hell we did.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Because some of us are old and spent many years in a monospace font, and liked it.
Seriously, I've been doing two spaces after a full-stop for so long that I'd never be able to stop doing it (I've been typing since the early/mid 80's). It just becomes part of how you do things. The reality is, it may or may not render in such a way as anybody will notice it -- that doesn't mean I'm going to stop doing it.
If you were taught to use the two spaces, you're likely to always use that.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If you read the question, we're talking about text, not code. I couldn't care less what you do with your code; however, as a professional writer, the new standard is one space.
If you really want to get into the the theory behind it, it's actually quite simple. We now use one space to avoid "rivers of white" in text. In short, if you look at a sample of documents that have been double spaced after the punctuation, you'll start to notice lines of white that run throughout the document. This distracts the reader and lowers the readability of the document. In typewriter days, two spaces made a lot of sense. Due to the large variation of widths in characters, it helped keep a more uniform space between sentences. With modern word processors and fonts, the need for the double space as been eliminated.
Now, when you get into typography and design, you're dealing with aesthetic and this will vary on a case by case basis. Letter spacing, kerning, and leading all come into play and it's less about the number of spaces you use and more about how you're using your spaces. In coding, I could see the use for even more than two spaces.
*NOTE* - It might seem contradictory that I'm advocating single spacing, yet I've double spaced between all my sentences. I'm an old school typewriter guy and old habits die hard. This is why modern technology is so great. I have all of my software set to only allow single spacing between sentences. I always do document searches for double spaces. All of my professional writing goes out single spaced. All of my personal writing goes out double spaced, completely out of laziness.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
Not only that, they're so bad I can't even see the apostrophe in your sentence.
One of the many deficiencies of HTML.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Three is the number of the counting, and the counting of the number shall be three.
When the "Fifteenth Edition of The Chicago Manual of Style" (the bible on grammar) came out around eight years or so ago, the authors were on WGN radio in Chicago promoting the book and taking questions. Someone called in asking this very question about one or two spaces at the end of a sentence (I wanted to call and ask the same question). The authors were very clear, one, even for mono space fonts.
If you are doing type setting, by all means use 1 spaces. But as you cut and paste your texts into different programs, you may be pasting into different default type faces. Sometimes it's proportional and sometimes it's monospaced. So why not use 2 spaces to be on the safe side? It's simple to programmatically replace 2 spaces by 1 space any way, if necessary. Let's be considerate of our readers rather than swear allegiance to a rule learnt in our youth.
Try 's/\. / /g'. I can't think of any code that would get screwed up by that.
You could have entered tons of spaces after that period. Depending on which comment post mode you're using, it may be using standard HTML behavior, which strips out superfluous white space, including double spaces between sentences.
I don't care if you're a casual writer or developer, having the Chicago Manual of Style [15th Edition myself] on hand will teach you to become a much better typesetter in your work.
Notice when you read shit on the internet it is single spaced after punctuation, and not double spaced?
That's only because HTML decided that consecutive whitespace should be compressed to a single character. I may put two spaces after full stops followed by new sentences, but I'm not going to make one of them to (try to) force it.
HTML, also by not employing indentation at the start of paragraphs by, has steered people toward double-spacing between paragraphs. Print media prefers not to waste the line between paragraphs and sticks with indentation of the first line of paragraphs. Books tend to reserve double spacing between paragraphs for a change of scene within a chapter, and if it occurs at a page break, a line with one to five asterisks, spaced, is employed, on whichever page it will fit.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
"A single character space, not two spaces, should be left after periods at the end of sentences (both manuscript and in final, published form) and after colons."
I've given this a lot of thought over the years and I believe you can break it down into three circumstances
1) If you're using a monosaced typeface or a typewriter, use two spaces. It's the convention and I personally think it makes reading the text much easier. Of course how often does this situation arise these days? Not very.
2) With a typesetter or typesetting software a "space" has no specific length as it varies depending on the needs of the typesetter. That said some typesetters pad the space after a period and some don't. Either way it will look good and consistent. Trust your typesetter. Though if you use TeX you have your choice of which style to go with. It doesn't matter which you choose, it'll look fine.
3) If you're using a word processor it doesn't matter. Word processors produce crap for output. By using one you are stating up front that you don't care how the final product looks. By definition you are producing an informal text and as such you can use as many spaces as you want since it's not going to affect the aesthetic value or readability of the text any more than the decision to use a word processor in the first place. If you do care about how it looks and reads use typesetting software.
End of discussion.
Awesome.
Next topic: emacs or vi.
I am not a crackpot.
The fact that HTML decides for you is irrelevant anywhere that isn't using HTML. HTML strips out any repeated whitespace, regardless of whether or not it's at the end of a sentence. HTML also does all sorts of other nutty things with formatting that may or may not make any sense depending on what you're trying to do.
Actually that ought to be: s/\([.?]\) /\1 /g
Since you don't want to lose the "." or the "?". You also need to do:
s/\([.?]["']\) /\1 /g
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Slashdot doesn't strip the spaces, your browser's HTML parser does. <-- There's two spaces there, look at the source.
<xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
HTML, also by not employing indentation at the start of paragraphs by, has steered people toward double-spacing between paragraphs. Print media prefers not to waste the line between paragraphs and sticks with indentation of the first line of paragraphs. Books tend to reserve double spacing between paragraphs for a change of scene within a chapter, and if it occurs at a page break, a line with one to five asterisks, spaced, is employed, on whichever page it will fit.
For the last decade we've had a thing called CSS and you can indent your first lines to your heart's desire. Typesetting software for books doesn't do it unless the designer asks for it either.
<paragraph>
<sentence>
<word>The</word>
<word>only</word>
<word>way</word>
<word>to</word>
<word>fix</word>
<word>this</word>
<word>is</word>
<word>with</word>
<word>XML</sentence>
<sentence>
<word>Totally</word>
<word>human</word>
<word>readable</sentence>
</paragraph>
TeX is the one true typesetting program. By default, it indents paragraphs (except for the first paragraph in a section).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The first thing I do when I edit an article or manuscript is run a find/replace to find 2 spaces and replace with 1. Same as every other editor. So your spaces are all wasted work.
In the past it was correct to use 2 spaces when typing fixed-width type, and it was wrong when typing proportional type. Today, 2 spaces is always wrong because we don't use typewriters. Today, you just write semantically, not for presentation, because we have infinite varieties of presentation, your writing will certainly not always be published in fixed-width type. In other words, put in good data (a complete sentence followed by a space and then another complete sentence) and leave out bad data (extra spaces.)
> typewriter
There is your problem. Note that the year starts with a "2". There are these things called computers. They are garbage-in-garbage-out. 2 spaces after a sentence is garbage that someone will have to clean up.
As far as efficiency is concerned -WTF- people have a data density that they want in their communications, as the extra space allows for some time to comprehend the data, assuming that the reader is maintaining a pace.
Two spaces after a period that ends a sentence.
Otherwise, Dr. Ms. Mrs. Mme. Mr. Mlle. etc. eng. fr. and all those other abbreviations look like they end a sentence.
Tab, of course, is ASCII 9, not "n * 0x20", where n==some value between 1 and whatever. Look at python code, where leading white space counts - mixing tabs with spaces is dumb.
One of the many deficiencies of HTML.
Perhaps. I'm in the habit of putting an after periods when I write for HTML. Problem would be solved, if it wasn't for comment editing code that strips them out (such as here on Slashdot which you can see here since I put 4 nbsp's separated by spaces after the periods in this paragraph, and despite the fact they are preserved through the preview, they are having no visible effect). The deficiency is not strictly with HTML, but with some of the editors that work with it.
Though I agree that HTML does not make it easy to maintain double spaced sentence separation. I hate reading single-spaced sentence text, I always notice it and it looks ugly. Perhaps I should insert
after every sentence, and while that would look ugly too, at least it would show my displeasure with the sentence police who have apparently decided that we will not use two spaces...