Slashdot Mirror
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.
"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).
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???
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.
/*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.
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.
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
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