|
|
|
The following sources are from a variety of web sites. The authors name is a link to the original source. I have made a bibliography available if you would like to take a look at it rather than going to the various external links.
Credentials: TECHNICAL WRITER FOR THE HARLEQUIN GROUP a software company located in England. Date of web page October 1995.
"Tight typesetting requires that the spacing after a period be equal to, or under certain circumstances even narrower than, that between words. The older rules about the enlarged spacing (frequently like a white hole) at the end of a sentence should be finally done away with."
Credentials: A writer for TypeArt Foundry Inc. a source for quality fonts. Date of web page 1998.
"The rule is: ONLY TYPE ONE SPACE AFTER A PERIOD!
The reason you may have learned to type two spaces after a period was that you were typesetting on a typewriter. As a typewriter set fixed-pitch type (i.e. the widths of all the letters were the same and no kerning pairs were possible), the letters set very loosely, which made it necessary to add an extra space between sentences to make the break more obvious. With modern fonts, the letters are spaced and kerned much more tightly and the extra space after the period is unnecessary. The increased space actually becomes distracting and emphasizes the breaks too much."
The Educational Computing Network (ECN)
Credentials: ECN is a subdivision of Information Technology Services (ITS) at Governors State University (GSU). Date of web page 1996.
"Remember in high school typing class how the teacher always reinforced putting two spaces after a period? If two spaces are used after a period when a word processing program is used, rivers of annoying white space will be created throughout the document. This is a hard habit to break, but only one space after periods should be used."
Credentials (as he has written): I am a type designer, typographer, writer, and web-site designer. I received a Master's degree in Digital Typography from Stanford University in 1986, where I studied under Donald Knuth and Charles Bigelow. I spent a year at Pixar, then I started working for myself, designing typefaces like Tekton and Graphite, both of which are available from Adobe Systems. I also have a series of typefaces based on the lettering of Frank Lloyd Wright, marketed by AGFA and Monotype corporations. I also do web site design for companies. My company is called Verso, located in Palo Alto and San Francisco. Date of web page 1996.
"Putting two spaces between sentences is an old secretary's myth. While it won't affect your web pages, it makes your e-mail and word-processor documents harder to read. One of the first things you learn in a good typography class is that a word space should be about the width of the letter "i." The extra space breaks the natural rhythm of the sentences. You don't do it in your handwriting, we never do it in books and newspapers, why should it be right for your word processor or your e-mail? It isn't. Even if you are using a fixed-width font, the period itself has quite a bit of white space, enough to distinguish it and the following word space from a regular word space. More space makes the sentences float apart, making life difficult for the reader, no matter what your typing teacher taught you. Since we typographers are very picky about such things, if a larger space were helpful, we would use it.
This is a hard-and-fast rule, whether you use a typewriter or a word processor: never, ever, ever put two spaces after a period. Please don't flame me on this; if you insist on doing it your way, I've done the best I can. I get lots of nice thank-yous on this one, so give it a shot."
Credentials: A co-owner of AB Typesetting, a division of Accurapid Translation Services, Inc. in Poughkeepsie, New York. AB Typesetting has served the U.S. business community with high-quality multilingual typography since 1981. Date of web page 1998.
The use of inch marks for quotation marks, foot marks for apostrophes, or hyphens for m-dashes is poor typography in any language; so is double spacing after a period.