4 ms·

It's cheaper to print a 310 page book than a 360 page book. That's why.

• isleyaardvark 16y ago
  I'm willing to bet that some back of the envelope calculation would show that the savings are not anywhere near that many pages, and that the pages saved by either reducing the font size or the measure of the lines would dwarf the savings from single spaces after periods.
  • apotheon 16y ago
    I think it would be near that many pages, for many books around that size, at least. It depends in large part on how many sentences you fit on a page, after all. Anyway, you're claiming a false dichotomy there. Standardizing on single spaces is an incredibly easy fix if you want to minimize space used up, and the space savings far outweigh the effort (regardless of the cost in readability). In fact, shrinking typefaces will damage readability more quickly than eliminating the second space between sentences -- so if you're going to shrink text, you might as well wipe out a bunch of spaces while you're at it. It's silly to talk about whether shrinking margins would save more space than getting rid of "extra" spaces between sentences, when it's quite simple to get rid of the spaces whether you shrink the margins or not.