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Subject:Re: Spaces after periods 'n such From:Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"Mark L. Levinson" <nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il>, Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca> Date:Sun, 31 Oct 2010 08:21:24 -0700 (PDT)
One other thing about using a single space after a period: It can sometimes lower the page count. There are times when having multiple spaces can cause a line of text to be shoved onto a following page. In a document that has hundreds of pages, that can add several pages. And if the document is being printed, that drives up the number of pages that must be printed and increases printing cost.
I don't know if anyone would consider such an increase significant; I just thought I'd mention it.
Now to throw another monkey wrench into the works: what about the number of spaces following a colon?
--- On Sun, 10/31/10, Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca> wrote:
From: Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca>
Subject: Re: Spaces after periods 'n such
To: "Mark L. Levinson" <nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il>
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Sunday, October 31, 2010, 2:39 AM
On Sat, Oct 30, 2010 at 2:33 PM, Mark L. Levinson
<nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il> wrote:
> And in favor of the single space we have the
> combined self-interest of programmers (who like
> to treat every space the same for the sake of
> simplicity) and graphic designers (who like to
> see text as an even grey and readability be
> damned).
and i would prefer to use all lowercase letters and no punctuation
whatsoever but what would that solve in the interest of better
communication i tend to lead in the direction of less distraction and
not more so whatever helps the user to understand the information
without being distracted by the works visual appearance is always the
best answer proportionally spaced typefaces may not add a larger
mathematical space after periods but because the letters are kerned
tighter an extra space is visually jarring it is always best to
explore various samples of typefaces before committing an entire
manuscript to it the best way to compare the visual appearance of a
single space versus two spaces after periods is to set the text with
justified left and right margins the system spreads the two spaces too
wide and creates a less aesthetically pleasing result whereas a single
space looks more balanced this is not to dispute the idea that
aesthetic judgment depends on the judge but larger minds than ours
have discussed and debated this issue to death and i happen to agree
with their recommendations
tony
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