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On Fri, 12 Jul 1996 14:22:19 -0600, Eric W. Dahlinger wrote:
>Two spaces after a period was common when the state of the art was a
>manual typewriter and monospaced fonts. Yes, it was done to improve
>readability and it seemed to work in that environment.
>It seems so totally silly today, when most of us have access to
>printing/composition equipment that is at least a little more high
>tech than the old manual Royal with those jammin' keys.
Two spaces after a period is something I learned in a typing course
back in the eleventh grade, and since most of my original computer
experience was on my trusty old C-64, with an excellent word processor
but no proportional fonts, it was a well-developed habit by the time I
started using "modern" tools.
Nevertheless, I've often found that two spaces after a period STILL
improves readability, at least for me. And since I use monospaced
fonts in most electronic communication anyway (email, news, BBS
messaging, etc. - proportional fonts make ASCII graphics and
nicely-formatted .sigs look really weird) it still seems appropriate
for most of my typing.
No doubt, once I get around to upgrading my machine so I can use this
dictation system, this will change, as I imagine VoiceType will use
"modern" rules for punctuation. For now, with my poor little 486DX33,
I have to stick to this pathetic keyboard interface for data entry
<sigh>...
Your friend and mine,
Matt
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