Re: Spacing in general.

Subject: Re: Spacing in general.
From: Robert Plamondon <robert -at- PLAMONDON -dot- COM>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 1996 08:16:08 PDT

>Single spacing has NOTHING to do with laziness. The advent of
>photocomposition typesetting and now desktop publishing, which primarily
>call for fully justified formats and even word spacing throughout the
>line, make one space between sentences "correct."

No, no, no! Typesetting has a continuous tradition going back to
Gutenberg. Single-spacing after periods has been the typesetting
tradition for ages. Double-spacing after periods was introduced
as a KLUDGE to make typewritten text less unreadable. It is in the
same category as the "indent paragraphs five spaces" rule for typescript,
which also has no resemblance to professional typesetting.

Typewriters produced ugly, hard-to-read output, and minimizing their
flaws required special formatting. It has nothing to do with the
readability of real typesetting, or its DTP equivalent.

-- Robert
--
Robert Plamondon, President/Managing Editor, High-Tech Technical Writing, Inc.
36475 Norton Creek Road * Blodgett * Oregon * 97326
robert -at- plamondon -dot- com * (541) 453-5841 * Fax: (541) 453-4139

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