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Are Two Spaces After a Period Better Than One? (arstechnica.com)
Researchers at Skidmore College conducted an eye-tracking experiment with 60 Skidmore students and found that two spaces at the end of a period slightly improved the processing of text during reading. Ars Technica reports the findings: Previous cognitive science research has been divided on the issue. Some research has suggested closer spacing of the beginning of a new sentence may allow a reader to capture more characters in their parafoveal vision -- the area of the retina just outside the area of focus, or fovea -- and thus start processing the information sooner (though experimental evidence of that was not very strong). Other prior research has inferred that an extra space prevents lateral interference in processing text, making it easier for the reader to identify the word in focus. But no prior research found by [study authors] Johnson, Bui, and Schmitt actually measured reader performance with each typographic scheme.
First, they divided their group of 60 research subjects by way of a keyboard task -- the subjects typed text dictated to them into a computer and were sorted into "one-spacers" (39 regularly put a single space between sentences) and "two-spacers" (21 hit that space bar twice consistently after a period). Every student subject used but a single space after each comma. Having identified subjects' proclivities, the researchers then gave them 21 paragraphs to read (including one practice paragraph) on a computer screen and tracked their eye movement as they read using an Eyelink 1000 video-based eye tracking system. [...] The "one-spacers" were, as a group, slower readers across the board (by about 10 words per minute), and they showed statistically insignificant variation across all four spacing practices. And "two-spacers" saw a three-percent increase in reading speed for paragraphs in their own favored spacing scheme. The controversial part of the study has to do with the 14 point Courier New font that the researchers presented to the students. "Courier New is a fixed-width font that resembles typewritten text -- used by hardly anyone for documents," reports Ars. "Even the APA suggests using 12 point Times Roman, a proportional-width font. Fixed-width fonts make a double-space more pronounced."
First, they divided their group of 60 research subjects by way of a keyboard task -- the subjects typed text dictated to them into a computer and were sorted into "one-spacers" (39 regularly put a single space between sentences) and "two-spacers" (21 hit that space bar twice consistently after a period). Every student subject used but a single space after each comma. Having identified subjects' proclivities, the researchers then gave them 21 paragraphs to read (including one practice paragraph) on a computer screen and tracked their eye movement as they read using an Eyelink 1000 video-based eye tracking system. [...] The "one-spacers" were, as a group, slower readers across the board (by about 10 words per minute), and they showed statistically insignificant variation across all four spacing practices. And "two-spacers" saw a three-percent increase in reading speed for paragraphs in their own favored spacing scheme. The controversial part of the study has to do with the 14 point Courier New font that the researchers presented to the students. "Courier New is a fixed-width font that resembles typewritten text -- used by hardly anyone for documents," reports Ars. "Even the APA suggests using 12 point Times Roman, a proportional-width font. Fixed-width fonts make a double-space more pronounced."
Is it any wonder that the brain is optimized for 2 spaces after a period?
There's probably a part of the brain which is totally optimized for recognizing that particular text cue by the time you have read a few thousand sentences.
It's a fixed format font- so it will be different for proportional fonts and the sites I use already display both single and multiple spaces after a period as 'about 2 spaces". They don't alter the textual data- they just alter the way the text is displayed.
There's probably a benefit to some spacing difference vs "all run together text.with nospaces." But if everyone had been reading text with 1.5 or 2.7 spaces after a period since age 3 then the test would probably have found that was the ideal spacing.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Adding extra space after the period makes sense typographically. That's why it make sense to put two spaces after a period when typing on a typewriter.
Computers can add the space automatically though. If you look at the spaces after a period in any decent font, it's wider than the spaces after other letters.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Double-spacing is a hangover from manual typing, and most of us who learned in that era learned by typing with something resembling Courier. Most typewriters couldn't handle proportional fonts or adding extra space after a period, so double-spacing was the way around that. When I see something double-spacing, I recognize that person as someone who is generally old enough to have learned on a typewriter (or the first generations of word processing), and who doesn't engage heavily with IT. Those people are also likely to be less distracted in reading and thus capable of reading faster. The "3 percent increase" for them reading with double spaces is hardly significant.
Due to retina detachment I am almost blinded on one eye and the vision of other eye is slowly degrading
To compensate the gradual loss of vision I make the font of my computer screen much larger, and I change the font setting and use fonts that are much easier to my eyes
Now I can appreciate why good fonts are much better than lousy ones
Before I had that retina problem my vision was 20/20. I actually had a pilot license
At that time fonts for me were, well, fonts. Some were boring, some were pretty, some were crazy
Now, my view on the fonts (pun intended) has totally changed. Some of the fonts I used to think as 'funny' or 'pretty' are actually very tiring for my degrading eyes. Those which were deemed 'boring', on the other hand, surprised my eyes for they do not need to be 'stared' for too long
So it's not how many spaces after a period. It's the size of the font and the structure of the font that counts !!
If you have a search function that doesn't ignore whitespace, you're probably onto a loser before you even start.
Plus, why would you search for an entire sentence + follow on sentence in one search? That's just going to end in disaster whether it's a double-space, a new-line, a new paragraph or anything else.
"Ignore whitespace" is an option in your searches for a reason.
2 spaces and the Oxford comma! You one space kids with your missing commas can get off my lawn!
IMHO, it is better to use a tab.
So you're angry that the "old type-writer-using geezer" is reading ten words per minute more than you and you're trying to sabotage his productivity?
And millennials wonder why nobody likes them...
Because you have humans using the system.
Which is why you "ignore whitespace" and code it as an option wherever it's needed. If anything, it actually makes searching FASTER, because an exact-whitespace match takes longer to find.
When you then put in Unicode, other languages, non-breaking spaces, paragraph marks, and you're working on human-entered data, you're really onto a loser from the start if you have coded anything on a byte-for-byte matching process.
Also, your system works against you in more ways than one. Someone creates an entry with one space. Someone else doesn't see it so they create it with two. Now you have two entirely different entries with different data referring to different database rows, but both "look" identical.
Ignore whitespace, and the problem solves itself.
If you aren't normalizing your text data and your searches then your database is worthless anyway.
"But we had one certain thing about a human language, - that the words are separated with a space, with one space."
I hate to break it to you.... people (like myself) were taught to use two spaces after a full-stop for DECADES. The predecessors of ubiquitous computing were all taught like that as the only reference was typewriters and which were often taught to double-space.
This is not a "now we'll have a problem". This is a "You've already had this problem for a very long time and it's never been standardised, so don't make bad assumptions".
You are much more likely to find existing users using double-space-after-period than you are younger users.
Fact is, there is no such standard. What standards they were stayed the same from typewriters to PCs, but then changed to this "one-space" system, and now people are arguing over "one-space vs two-space" again. So you have to code to account for all situations anyway.
Sort is more problematic, sure, but again ignoring whitespace in sort is incredibly easily (and actually beneficial... did you enter the book title as "whitehouse" or "white house"? Surely you want those listed close to each other).
This was never a given. I was EXPLICITLY taught, less than 30 years ago, to double-space after periods. It's a habit you'll find throughout this post (which I'm writing at 100+ WPM). Maybe the new generations weren't but you can't just assume that.
Don't even get me started on spaces (and punctuation) when they are near / inside the end of quotes, semi-colons, etc.
Stop making bad coding assumptions where they relate to human-entered or human-visible data (which INCLUDES search criteria, and the original entered data).
Oh, look at that.... Slashdot replaces double-space after period with single space. This is definitely two spaces to the left. And now three spaces to the left of that.
When even Slash has it in code they haven't updated properly in decades and can't have UK pound signs (you get this junk:
£), you know you're onto a loser!
No one has a lifetime of reading monospace text anymore, which is the only thing this study covered.
Also, in most cases text input have their spaces normalized.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Oh, look at that.... Slashdot replaces double-space after period with single space. ...
It is not Slashdot. It is a browser and the HTML. Two or three spaces are always one in the browser https://stackoverflow.com/ques...
So a client of an Internet shop sees always one space, and it is confusing for her/him why the product does not sort properly.
In fact, I had a lot of problems with these multiple spaces coming with product titles from suppliers. And I do not work only with English language.
Slashdot loses formatting unless you post using the "code" option.
Also, generally on the web, browsers render HTML multiple spaces as a single space - try using instead.
-
Here's the correctly spaced version of your text:
I'm not sure why this is being discussed. It makes absolutely no difference how many spaces you put after a period. See, that was one space. That was 2 spaces and it looks exactly the same. This time I used 3 spaces. That was 8 spaces, and here comes 13. Could you tell the difference? I didn't think so.
They're fun to "find/replace" when some old type-writer-using geezer has put them in one of our document templates. Another favourite of mine is the guy who puts spaces after an opening bracket ( like so).
Don't know if it is my dyslexia or just how I read but if I see function(variable), my brain just filters out the open parenthesis at first glance and reads everything as functionvariable. If I write it as function ( variable ), it just reads better for me, particularly when I start getting into complex logic conditions.
So what did they really demonstrate? That people who don't know how to write don't read very well either.
The worst aspect of the results is that in a sample of 60 college students more than half didn't know how to write! How the F do 39 out of 60 college students not know how many spaces to use?? What the F are they doing in college???
I prefer two spaces in searching text. It's easier to write a regex that will match a sentence break without also matching common abbreviations like Mr./Mrs./Ms./St./ P.S./i.e./ex./ etc.
"WANTED: Sinking ship seeks rats."
Most only need one space after their period before we're back in business. Some though have a little extra surge at the end, so two spaces is a safer bet. Unfortunately you don't know until you "know", if you know what I mean.
That's what the <pre> tag is for.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Ever taken a ruler and held it over the bottom half of a line of text and been surprised that you can still easily read it? If we cut letters in two we can increase the amount of information on a page and probably be able to what I would call "chunk read," or absorb information and meaning more quickly. It would make, I think, the "parafoveal" capture of extra characters easier. Also, we need to progress to an "emotional alphabet," something like: "a" with a following up arrow indicating rising anger, "j" with a down arrow indicating decreasing jealousy, "h" with an equal sign indicating a sustaining level of hate, etc. It could be much more complicated and subtle. I called it "emotional algebra" to order my thinking. Don't tell me about emoticons. They are for children.
Janet looked at Amelia and smiled brightly while putting out her hand at the business conference. (without emotional algebra, just a couple of actions)
Janet looked at Amelia and smiled brightly while putting out her hand at the business conference. (j,h{up arrow}) [And now we know her internal state while she performed those actions]
E Proelio Veritas.
/*Standard SQL*\ /*Depending of SQL Server commands there may be some difference*\
select * from table where title like '%first_word %second_word%'
or
select * from table where replace(title,' ','') = "first_wordsecond_word"
However the general rule of thumb is no matter what the writing conventions are. If humans are putting it in the system, there will be mistakes.
So "Hello World" vs "HelloWorld" (Slashdot cleared out my two non-breaking space) is a possible chance.
For the most part on big databases for searching I often will need to use a Levenshtein or Jaro algorithm, with normalizing white spaces. Just because human error is so common.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I do searches expecting whitespaces and hate those searches that ignore it.
If I am searching for the word pat, I add a whitespace before or after it so I don't get every result that has pat in the word (pattern, patient, patsy, etc)
people (like myself) were taught to use two spaces after a full-stop for DECADES. The predecessors of ubiquitous computing were all taught like that as the only reference was typewriters and which were often taught to double-space.
I was taught this way. This was when fixed-width fonts dominated typing. Now that fixed-width fonts are no longer the norm, I've switched to a single space after the period. My inner pedant screamed at first, but he got over it.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Take this kind of consistency further. Use the same divider for everything - letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, chapters... No bueno. Why not use the same dividers for the same type of elements and bigger dividers for bigger elements: no space between letters, one space between words, two spaces between sentences, new line between paragraphs, new page between chapters... Is that so hard to understand - clear visual guides to tell us the level of importance of each element. I believe the problem exists only due to habit and emotional response to change. Like for the metric system. Or temperature degrees. Or which side of the road to drive on... If you give it some thought and read a few opposing points of view, you will reach the logical conclusion that one system is better than the rest. For the record: the metric system, Celsius, left-side driving.
WHERE'S THE ALL CAPS STUDY?
If the extra space helps, IT HELPS. It doesn't matter that they used a fixed width font for the test. Since proportional fonts mess with the size of the space, to have a meaningful test they almost had to use fixed width. A single space separates words to make them more readable and a double space separates sentences for the same reason. Even if it doesn't aid in reading speed, I guarantee you it helps if you have to go back and find a particular sentence in the middle of the text.
But what if, after the question mark in the headline, there are two spaces ?!?
it simply does not matter for most cases. There is the historical reason why double spacing made sense but it rarely matters. It has been pointed out that HTML does not mind whether double spacing is used. Also decent text processing systems like Latex do not show any difference. So, it simply does not matter. If one feels good doing two spaces. Where fanatism in syntax can matter is in programming but also there, the languages don't distinguish between one and two spaces. What matters however is zero or one spacing. I common mistake done in programming languages which allow spaces to be used as multiplication is to mistake xy with x y. This is often hard to catch. I personally always had big reservations with the tab which can often lead to mistakes in data as it is not visible and only the processing of the data with programs can lead to problems. But also here, some tolerance can help as it is easy to "clean out tabs" with one strike. There are obviously some who like tabs. Let them live. Also, if somebody likes the nostalgia with double spacing after punctuation, let them be even if it does not make much sense any more with modern type setting systems.
Ah, the modern world. You must do it this way because we have one broken-ass piece of software that can't handle it any other way.
Also, you're holding your phone wrong.
Typing two spaces at the end of a sentence indicates a between-sentences gap, as opposed to a between-words gap. That may or may not be the same amount of space. If you're using a proportional font, then you're relying on the computer to handle the spacing, and this should be no different. Perhaps two spaces should kern together to be the equivalent of 1.2 spaces, and that sort of rule can be handled by the font.
The problem is that determining the difference between the end of a sentence and a period that just ends an abbreviation is quite difficult. That's something that requires natural language analysis, not something simple like kerning that is part of the design of proportional fonts.
So everyone should continue to learn to type with two spaces after a period. We know it's superior for fixed-space fonts. Computers should be taught to do the right thing for proportional fonts. If they don't, file a bug report.
Unicode doesn't even support the concept of a less than full stop.
There's no reasonable way to differentiate the period after an abbreviation like "Mr.", from one at the end of a sentence.
CSS doesn't let you control the number of spaces that follow a period - the authors of CSS apparently didn't believe this was a "style" choice.
What if the "best" choice was 1.5 spaces between sentences?
Fonts have not solved this problem, and the problem has actually gotten worse now that one-space-at-the-end-of-sentences has become the status quo.
We were told twenty (thirty?) years ago that computer typography would solve this problem, but that has not happened, even though the teaching and convention has changed. Fonts just add extra space after all periods, including inline abbreviations like Mr. Sure, higher-end desktop publishing knows the difference in-line periods and end-of-sentence-periods, but that has become less of what we read, and word processing and web browsers never did pick up on the difference. So it was up to us grognards to manual add the extra space.
Shame on this study for using a fixed width font for testing. The improved readability of large blocks of text with a little bit of extra spacing between sentences is quite obvious. You fools advocating for single-space-after-end-of-sentence-periods should experiment for yourselves (with a print page using proportionally spaced text). We have been sold a bill of goods.
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Hey, take it easy, he was snapchatting about his artisanal toilet paper business plan at the same time he made his post. Something about Sears catalogs...
In variable-width fonts, the extra space is more helpful. Spaces tend to be narrower from the start, so the extra gap between thoughts is needed.
I don't care if its function(variable) or function ( variable ). But if you do function ( variable), you will need to be stabbed.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Fonts did not solve this problem. Do you select a different space after a sentence or do you just press the space bar? The characters in a font do not know where they are. If you are lucky some software will fix this when the text is presented. Otherwise, it will not.
Why did I count the spaces to make sure you had it correct?
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I notice you're keen on paragraph breaks, reflecting a common preference in readers. Do you suppose that preference is because your brain has been conditioned to expect breaks between paragraphs? Or is it because the way the eye and brain work together means that interruptions in text are more easily read because it allows the brain to break down what is written into smaller, linked bits of information, rather than trying to parse it all together?
I personally think the preference for a visually distinct spacing led to two spaces, not the other way around, and that the switch to single spacing came a result of people wanting to cram in more information per inch, or to improve "aesthetics" without considering how the user interacts with it. The choice certainly wasn't made because of readability, as this study clearly demonstrates.
However, after their period, most typists are approaching maximum fertility, and you might want to give some of them extra space.
These days, a lot of typists are male and don't have periods. You might want to avoid them too.
Most web browsers are crap, and their handling of white space sucks. Too bad you can't avoid them at any time of the month.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
So:
Group A uses single spaces. They read single space and double space at the same rate.
Group B uses double spaces. They read single space at the same rate as Group A, but they read double spaced text considerably faster.
Seems like a pretty good argument that we should all be using double spaces. That way we all could read faster all the time.
This is true. I drew a penis bird on everything I signed for a week. Nobody said a word.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Since when? Double spacing was recommended for decades when typing documents. Going to a single space is what is new.
Another example: German http://theweek.com/articles/46...
What is best in life? Hot water, good dentishtry and shoft lavatory paper.