The recurring space debate; was: Subject:,Re: Advice on starting out; dealing with employers

[David Neeley <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com>]

As usual, typography used to enhance the reading and comprehensibility 
factors of a piece extends far beyond single or double spacing after 
periods.

For those such as dyslexics who see text "jumping around on the page" 
there are probably other issues at work in addition--such as line length 
and leading and of course the fonts chosen.

The single vs. double space after periods essentially became an issue 
with typewriters and generations of machines with only fixed pitch fonts 
rather than proportional ones and no choice of space widths other than 
multiples of the single space width built in to the machine.

Most arguments about the issue today seem to stick stubbornly to a 
technology which is becoming vanishingly rare (you may have seen the 
article about the last typewriter factory in the world closing recently 
in India).

Proportional fonts have a variety of spaces at hand, and the most modern 
computer writing tools take advantage of that fact--and do not permit 
the use of more than one space after periods.

Gene mentioned "at one time" that DoD documents required double spacing 
after periods. I would be fascinated to see if that were still any sort 
of requirement.

The only place I see a real use for multiple spaces is in programming 
languages that use the spaces as a part of the required syntax. 
Arguments about double spacing in regular text seem for the most part to 
be a rather stubborn clinging to what one may have learned in typing 
classes decades ago.

As it happens, later this month I will celebrate my 62d birthday. I, 
too, had high school typing training that did its best to build the 
double space after periods into my muscle memory. However, when I moved 
to proportional fonts a few decades ago and became interested in the 
best possible results, I retrained myself to move on from the world of 
fixed pitch fonts and their artificial conventions. I would urge those 
of you who are substantially younger to do the same thing.

If you really want to see what well-set typography looks like in your 
own writing, I suggest you consider downloading the free Lyx authoring 
application. Since it is based on the TeX typsetting language, the 
output is gorgeous--and you will not find any 
multiple-space-after-periods no matter how much you try.

To create the most readily intelligible text, meanwhile, a careful 
analysis of your font choices would be in order. The ubiquitous "Times 
New Roman" isn't that great a choice for this. The Times family was 
developed to squeeze in a maximum number of characters in narrow 
newspaper columns while retaining some readability. There are far better 
choices today for documents with wider column widths--although I am not 
particularly taken with the trend to all sans-serif fonts for long text. 
Those with visual or cognitive challenges, I find, appreciate the visual 
hints given by serifs to help guide the eye along the line of print.

I also prefer fonts with reasonable x-heights and only modest ascenders 
and descenders. Again, that seems to help the visually impaired to 
distinguish more easily between similar characters.

Line leading, too, plays a part. Too dense, and your eye can wander from 
one line to another. Too loose, and your eye has difficulty finding the 
right line after you finish the last one. Both are especially bad for 
the visually or cognitively impaired. However, the optimal line leading 
is a function of the font and font size, the material, and the line 
width. It is difficult to reduce this to some mechanical formula--which 
is why word processors only approximate a reasonable leading and often 
produce output that looks fairly terrible.

This obviously can only scratch the surface. Learning to use a single 
space after periods in proportionally-spaced text, however, is a good 
beginning.

David

On 05/01/2011 08:55 AM, techwr-l-request -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com wrote: