vgqn ([identity profile] vgqn.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] calimac 2011-01-15 05:15 am (UTC)

Here's a truly insane screed against putting two spaces after a period

But, um, he's right. Double-spacing after periods is an artifact of the monospaced typewriter era. With proportional fonts, a single space leaves an appropriate amount of space after a period. Really, putting a single space after periods is part of what makes text in any professionally printed book look professional. It's also true for most text you see on webpages, because HTML removes extraneous spaces (thank ghod).

Go ahead, type as many spaces as you like after a period when you write an LJ post. (I just typed 5 spaces there.) When it displays, you'll see one (1). And ghod and typographers meant it to be.

I've always been highly amused that the iPhone panders to the 2-space habit by allowing the shortcut that typing two spaces after a word will insert a period plus a space. Nice.

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