Can't find setting

users
#41

Hi :slight_smile:
I think it is clear that James is not alone on this issue.  It depends on who you mean by experts too.  Professors are hardly noobs with regard to the written language.  So it seems opinion is divided.  I think we need to agree that we disagree and that disagreement is relatively harmless. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#42

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.

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?

Isn't part of this discussion the width of the space between sentences? It's sometimes hard to determine that in printed matter. But I find that a regular space between sentences makes reading harder, but too much space causes me to pause. So there must be a general happy medium here, which I always thought was the em-space.

#43

Virgil Arrington wrote:

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 just picked up the closest book I had at hand. It's "Computer
Networks", by Andrew Tanenbaum & David Wetherall, 5th edition, published
in 2012 by Pearson.. It has wider spacing between sentences than words.
Second book I picked off my bookshelf is "Ethernet The Definitive Guide"
by Charles Spurgeon, 1st edition, 2000, from O'Reilly. It also has
wider spacing between sentences. That's 2 for 2 of the first 2 books I
grabbed.

#44

Ken Springer wrote:

So there must be a general happy medium here, which I always thought
was the em-space.

And that goes back to my earlier comment about en and em quads in hand
set type. A slightly wider space makes it easier to read, because of
the way we recognize objects.

#45

James Knott wrote:

Ken Springer wrote:

So there must be a general happy medium here, which I always thought
was the em-space.

And that goes back to my earlier comment about en and em quads in hand
set type. A slightly wider space makes it easier to read, because of
the way we recognize objects.

I just tried a little experiment. I typed a sentence, with a period at
the end. I then started typing the next sentence with a lower case n.
I then placed the cursor directly over the first vertical line in the
n. After I finished the word, the n changed to upper case and the first
vertical line moved to the right, so it was no longer under the cursor
and resulting space was wider. I tried again with an i as the first
letter and the same thing happened, but the shift was not as great.

#46

I tried the same experiment. There was no change in position.

#47

Every book I looked at had one space between sentences.

#48

the academic presses I mentioned before were not 'technical' titles so I looked about and came up with:

_A Practical Guide to Linux_, Prentice-Hall: single-spaced.
_Learning the Bash Shell_, O'Reilly: double-spaced?

it's a bit hard to tell with the O'Reilly; I need to find a tiny ruler. some spacing between words look larger than some spacing between sentences.

guess it's different strokes for different presses.

hmm..., another O'Reilly text seems to have something short of double and longer than single. God, it's hard to discern the difference! but perhaps some here are right that these subliminal differences make a difference for ease of reading.

anyway, I agree with Tom we shouldn't disagree about agreeing to disagree.

F.

#49

It's interesting that you here talk about "blank lines". To add such lines, people would have to use line breaks, using Shift+Enter. But what they generally do (as I'm sure you realise) is press Enter twice - and this actually creates not a blank line but an empty paragraph: not only an empty text line but also the normal vertical paragraph spacing (not that they will have consciously set any, in fact).

Brian Barker

#50

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".

Remember that teachers are not always the quickest to catch up with new practices!

Also some required double-spacing for the lines of text as well.

That's another relic from Typewriterland, of course. In a word processor, you can space lines or paragraphs vertically by any amount you like: you do not have to be limited to adding space in whole text line heights. It's better to think of extra vertical spacing in millimetres or inches or points, not lines.

Brian Barker

#51

I just tried a little experiment. I typed a sentence, with a period at the end. I then started typing the next sentence with a lower case n. I then placed the cursor directly over the first vertical line in the n. After I finished the word, the n changed to upper case ...

(That's just LibreOffice's AutoCorrect in action, of course.)

... and the first vertical line moved to the right, so it was no longer under the cursor and resulting space was wider. I tried again with an i as the first letter and the same thing happened, but the shift was not as great.

Any change you see would surely just be due to different amounts of white space included around different characters in the font? And don't forget that positioning on a display is limited by the resolution of the screen - much coarser than potentially available on the eventual printed copy.

Brian Barker

#52

To add to this discussion of readability of text, spacing and punctuation is only a small portion of it. In the read word punctuation taught us when to take a breath, as with a continuous sentence separated by a comma, and a long full breath after the period, plus a space.
Now even as we type to each other in this email, we are using a sans serif font (for those not understanding serif and sans serif, sans serif fonts have no "leading" lines on the edge of the character). Sans serif fonts create a much harder font to read.

It has been found that a serif font with normal punctuation and spacing leads the eye to faster reading as opposed to sans serif. Man tests have been done with this. So the article written in the provided link, is found to be hard to read as it is a sans serif font used.

Regards

Andrew Brown

#53

James, I wonder if your paragraph alignment was set to "justified." If so, the letters might move side to side as you continue to type the line.

Virgil

#54

Felmon Davis wrote:

anyway, I agree with Tom we shouldn't disagree about agreeing to
disagree.

I disagree. :wink:

#55

You and I obviously have different tastes in literature. But, no matter, I'll follow Tom's advice and let the matter go. I'm happy to follow the advice of the overwhelming majority of professional typographers. If you don't want to, you don't have to, and I'll respect that.

Virgil

#56

Well, yes and no. In reading text on paper, readers in several
European countries tend to do better with sans-serif text than text
with serifs. Most people in the U.S. prefer text with serifs. But when
it comes to reading text on a screen (especially in medium-to-low
resolutions and almost always with small text) most readers tend to do
better with sans-serif text (serifs tend not to display well).

#57

In the read word punctuation taught us when to take a breath, as with a continuous sentence separated by a comma, and a long full breath after the period, plus a space.

This suggests that the point of the printed word is solely to enable public speaking. Those of us who can read without moving our lips do not need breaths between sentences! I can breathe and read at the same time; can't you? The true purpose of punctuation in written material is to clarify the structure of the material, not to indicate the pauses that might occur if the material were read aloud.

Now even as we type to each other in this email, we are using a sans serif font ...

That's what you think! You sent this message in plain text, so no font was identified. How I read it or anyone else does depends on how we decide or our mail clients choose to display it. I'm doing the same: you don't know how this appears to me as I'm composing it and I don't know how you will see it.

Brian Barker

#58

In Thunderbird's Preferences, you can choose what font the text of your email will be displayed in. By default, it seems it is "Times New Roman", but I now use "DejaVu Serif". I then get to choose what font the email is written in, with the current default as "Times". I just chose "DejaVu Serif" for the font of this text that I have typed here.

So, you can decide which font you wish to display any text that does not have a font identifier built in, and you can define the font of the text you are sending in your email, more than one if you choose.

As for punctuation and word spacing, try reading old Greek text or others of that era like that where they seem to not use spacings and punctuation in their text. We need them whether we read a text out load or silently. The internal punctuation gives you structure and also gives you a sense of "pausing" where the author wants such a thing to emphasize some word or portion of the text.

The punctuation in the sentence change the meaning of the sentence just by changing, adding, removing, key internal punctuation marks. Of course over the 30+ years between high-school and the last college writing course, the standards and rules have changes on what is needed where and how best to use a comma or semicolon. But without these in the text of books that I personally like to read, it would not be as easy to read as it is now.

As for which fonts are best to use where, well whole college courses and majors can be needed to make the "best guess" on the science of what fonts are best for what and which fonts are "more readable" than others. Book Publishers know what it best in the different types of books that publish. One font for text books, another for entertainment reading. The hard cover book fonts can be different than the paper back ones as well. There is a science involved in the choosing of the "proper" fonts. I just decide which looks best for me for ease of reading. I am told Serif fonts work the best for "entertainment" reading, but which serif font is the best, only you can decide which one in your fonts collection works best for you.

.

#59

Actually, that's only if you're sending html content. If you're sending
plain text, no you can't. And even if you're sending html, you should
also be sending plaintext alongside it, for people like me that are
(most of the time, unless I choose otherwise) reading the plaintext
version. If you don't I just see the plaintext with the html tags in
it. I choose what font it displays in, so no, you have absolutely no
control over what font I see things in, unless I switch to html view.

I'm sure you know all that, but I felt it was worth pointing out for
the poor people out there using things like Outlook who don't know any
better.

Paul

#60

In Thunderbird's Preferences, you can choose what font the text of your email will be displayed in. By default, it seems it is "Times New Roman", but I now use "DejaVu Serif".

This is very confused. What do you mean by "your email": presumably messages you *receive* - other people's messages, that is? Yes, exactly so - so their authors *don't* get to say how their messages appear to you.

I then get to choose what font the email is written in, with the current default as "Times". I just chose "DejaVu Serif" for the font of this text that I have typed here.

You think you are choosing the font in which your correspondents will see your messages. But you have just contradicted that above, by saying (correctly) that as a recipient you can overrule such formatting choices.

So, you can decide which font you wish to display any text that does not have a font identifier built in, ...

(You are now talking received messages again, right?) Correct - but also even if the text was formatted, in fact. In the case of this mailing list, for example, only the plain text version of what you send is distributed, so your formatting is lost before your text reaches anyone.

... and you can define the font of the text you are sending in your email, more than one if you choose.

You can try, but you'll generally fail - for reasons including the one you give yourself.

Brian Barker