Re: Origin of Ellipsis and double spacing after a sentence.

From: Ilya Zakharevich <nospam-abuse_at_ilyaz.org>
Date: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 13:06:57 -0700

On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 08:19:54PM +0100, Michael Everson wrote:
> And as a book designer and publisher, I think that having large spaces after a full stop is both unnecessary and vulgar.

As a book consumer, I know that having somewhat larger space after
end-of-sentence is a MUST (at least for the texts I care about). (I
summarized this in http://typophile.com/node/102394#comment-551442.)

So when acting as a designer, I try to make this happen. (Fortunately,
it is a default in TeX.)

  [[[ When analysing what TeX does, one should keep in mind that the
      default TeX fonts have PERIOD with no “extra right bearing”.
      So the “the extra space is 1⅑pt” in such a font (mentioned in
      http://typophile.com/node/102394#comment-551442) should be
      understood as the “extra right bearing at end of sentence”.
      Other fonts may have this extra space built-in (hindering use of
      PERIOD in its OTHER meanings). ]]]

[ I’ve read only the beginning of
   http://www.heracliteanriver.com/?p=324, and this beginning matches
   my feelings quite well. ]

Hope this helps,
Ilya

P.S. Of course, what we discuss here is PUBLISHING, which has only
      remote relationship to PLAIN TEXT with its “single/double space
      after PERIOD”. I’m not religious about doubling space after the
      period: it helps the line wrap algorithms, and algorithms for
      forward-sentence/backward-sentence in the text editor; that’s all.

      I have no opinion on whether doubling the space would help
      readability in monospaced fonts — my experience with
      such non-technical texts “I care about” is not wide enough.
Received on Sat Sep 14 2013 - 15:08:45 CDT

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