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#21

I have long been in the habit of putting a double space between sentences.

Indeed - and so have I.

I learned that in a typing class, IIRC.

Yes, but was that on a typewriter, where double spaces make sense?

What's the proper procedure in LO?

It's entirely up to every user what s/he does, of course. There are two main points, I think.

o I would suggest that two spaces are probably useful with fixed-pitch text as on a typewriter, especially when the sentence-ending full stop will be spaced so far from the last character of the sentence. So that's why we all learned that way. But that no longer applies with proportional fonts. (I still use double spaces in e-mail messages, since I send them as plain text and have no control how they are displayed by recipients.)

o In justified text, there is no such thing as a "single space" anyway: the size of the space between words depends on what happens to occur in the line. So there is no meaning to "two spaces" either: your word processor may permit you to include two consecutive space characters, but two spaces on one line could end up narrower than a single space on the next.

I'm really only throwing out the ideas, of course: it's up to individuals what they choose to do. (You'll have noticed my emoticon.) But it is worth dissuading novice word processor users not to attempt to use multiple spaces to indent text, for example: apart from being messy, this again will simply not work effectively in justified text or when rendered on another system.. The original questioner asked about "a series of spaces" (not necessarily double); he could have been attempting to line up text in columns, where he should (and could easily) have been using tabs or tables instead.

Brian Barker

#22

+1

Very well put, Brian, especially your observations about justified text. Using two spaces on a justified line can sometimes end up with a grand canyon of space between sentences.

A quick online search uncovered the following article about the evolution of the practice (along with a whole slew of articles that agreed):

www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.html

Virgil

#23

Hi :slight_smile:
One practical up-shot of this is that when i collect articles for my companies newsletter i;
1.  Paste into Writer as "unformatted text and apply styles
2.  Search&replace all ". " (single spaces) with ".  " (double space) but that makes some into triple spaces!  So, 
3.  Search&replace all ".   " (triples) with ".  "
4.  Then look through for anything weird.

I don't have to worry about other ways of ending a sentence because we carefully avoid making our newsletter look remotely interesting enough to read.  Certainly no double or triple exclamation marks and as few pictures as possible!!  A bit like the leaflets made to attract people to LibreOffice. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#24

There are mixed opinions on what to do while using a computer. In theory, I thought that the computer was assumed to do the spacing so you need not add two spaces. This is especially true if you use a layout where extra spacing is used to make proportional spacing look good. In HTML, extra spaces are flat out ignored. I stopped adding extra spaces while using TeX and LaTeX back in the 80s, because the computer made better spacing decisions than I ever could.

Perhaps OpenOffice variants are not there yet, but, on every documentation project on which I have worked, I am pretty sure that we were specifically directed to not add two spaces between sentences. Same with my publisher, no extra spaces after sentences.

If you really like the extra spaces, add them. You will notice that I placed an extra blank line between my paragraphs in this email. Then again, I never expected email to have great layout :slight_smile: While writing documents, I try to set the paragraph style to set spacing appropriately. I am always amazed at how many people do this in a word processor by simply adding blank lines in the document.

#25

I have been to college 6 times. Three for degrees and twice to pick up courses I wanted, one dropped out due to money issues and decided to not go after that degree/major. I had to take several English writing-related classes. The first degree required a typing course. Ever since then, on mainframes and the PCs, I was told to always use double-spacing after sentences. If I handed in a typed or word-processed document and did not double space it, I was marked off for not using the standard "format". Also some required double-spacing for the lines of text as well.

Yes, there are those people who do not like a double space after sentences, due to the justifying of the text for a book or similar printed "document". Personally, I have a friend in the book editing field and if the publisher wanted a single spaced manuscript, then all you need to do is change a double space to a single one in you text editor, like LO. I have done that before. I tend to automatically add the double space at the end of my sentences by 40+ years of typing on a computer keyboard, dumb terminal or PC based.

Now as for changes in what it "proper" formatting styles, I noticed that over the years, the "proper" ways of doing things, like footnotes and the other non-paragraph items, seem to change over the years. What was done in the 70's and 80's was not "proper" in the 90's and '00's.

To be honest, you need people, like our documentation writers, to tell us what is acceptable now. They should be "up" on the current document formating ideas. But, if you were to talk to a newspaper writer, you will find that they would be told that double spacing would waste "column space". For a book writer, writing 200+ page books, all of those double spaces can add up several [or many] more pages to be printed than the single spacing style. For people who charge by the page, then it could add up over a large number of copies.

So, personally I use double spacing. THEN, if I was to have it published, and needed to use single spacing, I would remove those extra spaces from the manuscript. That is simple enough today.

#26

I could be an arrogant d??? and say I told you so, and I rest my case. At least I am not so strong willed as that article in the URL you provided Virgil :sunglasses: .

But honestly I was taught from my first days learning a language some 50 years ago to use only one space, and through my time on this planet this has been re-inforced, along seeing what it does in digital documents in my career.

As an experiment for anyone to try, just use a document written in the most basic of editors, the text editor, save it as a .txt, then open it with a word processor, anyone of your choice, then save it to an .rtf etc. Try this with a number of formats, then reverse the process, save as a .doc first then try and port it down to a basic text document, and watch how the core basic punctuation / spacing is altered so radically. Even as to the way we create digital documents, it seems every app/tool we use has a different concept on punctuation and spelling. Even this email copied and pasted to a word processor has it's own rules and will be altered in some way.

This is what I was trying to cover in my reply on this subject a few emails back. Punctuation is becoming an issues in all forms of digital documentation and different languages, and my personal observation, non worse than the English language affected. Never mind adding that garbage mobile phone texting vocabulary many seem to have adopted and use, along with the total loss of punctuation in this as well, to the issues we are discussing here.

Regards

Andrew Brown

#27

Brian Barker wrote:

I would suggest that two spaces are probably useful with fixed-pitch
text as on a typewriter

A wider space between sentences is useful, no matter how the text is
created. It clearly defines the beginning and end of a sentence and is
easier on the eyes.

#28

Hi :slight_smile:
+1
but i think each person has to make their own mind up and it's not really a huge big deal imo.

My main problem with it is when people are inconsistent within articles they present for publication.  Also i really prefer to try to make the whole of my company's newsletter consistent if possible. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#29

An interesting observation Virgil.

When I went to school, mind you it was several lifetimes ago and in the backwoods of the Australian outback so it may not be too relevant to anywhere else on the planet but, I was told to always leave a double space at the end of every sentence. That was with hand writing, before typewriters were invented, at least there were none within several hundred miles of where I grew up.
These days with modern word processors I just don't bother to even try and insert two spaces at the end of sentences but I suppose I should, it certainly looks nicer and may even be proper.
It would be nice if modern word processors at least provided the option of a setting to do this automatically. Perhaps it should be the default setting.

(please note no double spaces used in this text)

Cheers all,

Bruce Carlson

this whole discussion rather puzzles me. I'm out of it because I've never heard of a rule requiring double spaces between sentences (born and raised in the US).

esthetically double space insertion annoys me when I have to edit texts but otherwise I don't notice so double spaces neither facilitate nor inhibit reading as far as I am concerned.

but not to just prattle on about myself, I have pulled three texts from a shelf, two are Oxford University and one is Johns Hopkins University. no double spaces that I can discern. oh, here's one from MIT Press; no double spaces. these are somewhat recent; here's an older volume from Stanford University (1992), again, no double spacing.

I gather from Brian Barker's (and others') posts that this has something to do with typewriters - is this a rule one learns by taking typewriter classes? (learned on a typewriter but can't remember if I double-spaced or not.) is it a rule applied to some special area of literature or publication?

F.

#30

An interesting observation Virgil.

When I went to school, mind you it was several lifetimes ago and in the backwoods of the Australian outback so it may not be too relevant to anywhere else on the planet but, I was told to always leave a double space at the end of every sentence. That was with hand writing, before typewriters were invented, at least there were none within several hundred miles of where I grew up.
These days with modern word processors I just don't bother to even try and insert two spaces at the end of sentences but I suppose I should, it certainly looks nicer and may even be proper.
It would be nice if modern word processors at least provided the option of a setting to do this automatically. Perhaps it should be the default setting.

(please note no double spaces used in this text)

Cheers all,

Bruce Carlson

this whole discussion rather puzzles me. I'm out of it because I've never heard of a rule requiring double spaces between sentences (born and raised in the US).

esthetically double space insertion annoys me when I have to edit texts but otherwise I don't notice so double spaces neither facilitate nor inhibit reading as far as I am concerned.

but not to just prattle on about myself, I have pulled three texts from a shelf, two are Oxford University and one is Johns Hopkins University. no double spaces that I can discern. oh, here's one from MIT Press; no double spaces. these are somewhat recent; here's an older volume from Stanford University (1992), again, no double spacing.

I gather from Brian Barker's (and others') posts that this has something to do with typewriters - is this a rule one learns by taking typewriter classes? (learned on a typewriter but can't remember if I double-spaced or not.) is it a rule applied to some special area of literature or publication?

F.

I read somewhere fairly recently that double spacing between sentences was for typewriters only. Apparently in printing the normal spacing between sentences was equivalent to 1 1/4 or so spaces. One space looked wrong on a typed page and two looked better. On computers, it is theoretically possible to set the sentence spacing to mimic the normal printing spacing so double spacing is not consider good practice on a computer. Those of us who learned to type on a typewriter have to unlearn the habit.

I learned to type in the US and the double spacing was taught back in the dark ages.

#31

Same here (dark ages = 1960s). When I became aware of the 'rule' that
double spacing at the end of a sentence was for typewriters, but not
for proportional fonts, I taught myself to change. It took some
effort, but now I do it without thinking.

Looking at a professionally typeset book, it appears (are my old eyes
deceiving me?) the space between sentences is a wee bit wider than
other spaces. If this is the case, it would be nice if word processors
would have a setting which would do this automatically.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapping_of_Unicode_characters#Spaces
lists twelve (12) different Unicode spaces, one of which is called a
punctuation space.

#32

/snip/

this whole discussion rather puzzles me. I'm out of it because I've
never heard of a rule requiring double spaces between sentences (born
and raised in the US).

esthetically double space insertion annoys me when I have to edit
texts but otherwise I don't notice so double spaces neither facilitate
nor inhibit reading as far as I am concerned.

/snip/

I gather from Brian Barker's (and others') posts that this has
something to do with typewriters - is this a rule one learns by taking
typewriter classes? (learned on a typewriter but can't remember if I
double-spaced or not.) is it a rule applied to some special area of
literature or publication?

F.

Writing for publication should never double space between sentences.
However, to answer the question, above,when I took a typing class,
around 1952, I was told to double-space between sentences. In those
days, if anyone was writing for publication, it would go thru an
editor, followed by a Linotypist. Then, for book or magazine copy, there
were galley proofs. And when the type was set, there
would be no double spaces. Nowadays, when a manuscript (notice that
the word means "hand-written") is submitted for publication, very
little editing or proofreading is done--the computer-generated text
goes fairly directly to the offset press, or whatever typesetting
system is used. So do *not* double space anything any more! (BTW,
it's a hard habit to break!)

--doug

#33

An idea I haven't actually tried, but might work...

Use the different Auto Correct options, until you get what you wish. Create a Replace option that is [period][space][space] and have your word processor replace it with [period][space character of your choice].

#34

As I stated before, I always us double spacing, but will remove the extra space if it was going to be needed that way for the publication. I use proportional fonts 99% of the time. I still use the double spacing with proportional fonts.

Yes, it is hard to break the habit. I did some typesetting in the early 70's around the same time I programmed my first mainframe program. Not only were thee several sizes of glyph spacings, but shims and other thin inserts to work with the proportional type width and to justify the line on the typeset page.

The question of LO having no adjustable width for spacing. As for the number of Unicode spacings, then use them in your documents, well you can but it can be complex to implement since there are many ways and rules to choose the spacing and then you have to make it work with any printer the document is printed to.

#35

Great point!

#36

You must be Catholic. (It is a mystery . . .)

#37

I read the above article and have made two observations:

1) Although the article was difficult to read, I think it would have
been easier on the eyes (mine, anyway) if there was more space between
the sentences.

2) Based upon the statements in the article, the frequency of the use of
two spaces after the period combined with the wide socio-economic
background of the people who engage in this practice, it is merely a
personal choice.

One more point. While in school earning my degree, the professors
usually handed out a list of requirements for handing in papers.
Margins, line spacing, fonts, etc. were all clearly defined in the
syllabus. If you didn't follow the requirements of the syllabus, you
were marked down accordingly.

Also, my previous employer had a monthly report that had specific
formatting rules. So, what it boils down to is if my GPA or my paycheck
is going to be affected, I format my composition in the way dictated.
Otherwise, I am "two space after the period" kind of person. Old habits
die hard . . .

#38

Michael wrote:

1) Although the article was difficult to read, I think it would have
been easier on the eyes (mine, anyway) if there was more space between
the sentences.

This is my point exactly. When there's extra space between sentences,
it's a lot easier to isolate the sentence from the surrounding text.
You have to look for the period, which may be more difficult to see,
depending on the letter it follows. For example a period following a
"k" is harder to discern than one following a "o". This means the
reader has to do extra work, while the eye is naturally equipped to
recognize the extra space. So, the choice is search for the sentence or
automagically recognize it.

#39

Hi :slight_smile:
Sometimes we lose track of the original posters problem and the answer that solves the problem gets buried under tons of interesting discussion.

I think Brian had the answer in his first post.  I've cut the inflammatory stuff that led to such a heated discussion (which i did enjoy and learned a lot from).

Thanks all!  Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#40

James,

I think the typographic experts would say that the extra space results in a visual pause after each sentence. Reading is intended to be a smooth flow, which is facilitated with single spaces after sentences. Just curious, since nearly every professionally published book since the mid-1900s has had one space after sentence ending punctuation, do you find reading books difficult?

I fully appreciate your preference, but it seems to be in the distinct minority as far as what the experts believe is the best practice.

Virgil