5 ms·

I used GNU typist when I taught myself touch typing with a Das Keyboard back in the day. One thing I found annoying was that it insisted on two spaces after a

by ginko 7y ago

I used GNU typist when I taught myself touch typing with a Das Keyboard back in the day. One thing I found annoying was that it insisted on two spaces after a period. I found that annoying so I replaces ". " with ". " in all tutorial files.

samatman 7y ago
That's an emacs-ism, it's used for M-a and M-e, go to beginning and end of sentence. I've adopted the convention myself, because of the utility. It isn't typographically sound, but typing is not typography.
- philsnow 7y ago
  > [double spacing between sentences] isn't topographically sound Why not? In speech, pauses between sentences are longer than pauses between words... I've never understood this debate. But then, I'm the kind of guy who will write prose like > He shouted, "Watch out!". ... with duplicated punctuation inside the quotation marks (because they carry meaning and are part of the quotation), so clearly I don't know the MLA or whatever.
  - samatman 7y ago
    It's not typographically sound. That is to say, typographers don't typeset books, newspapers, or magazine with double-spacing after a sentence. It's a style that emerged from typewriting, because it makes it easier to read monospaced text. Which is another reason I do it, I'm usually typing in a mono font even when I'm working on prose. That was my point, actually. Amusingly, the two sentences in the above paragraph have two spaces between them, as do this and the next. But you won't see it, because browsers typeset with one space between sentences.
    - globular-toast 7y ago
      They don't double space, but most will allow more space. You can double space in TeX source but TeX will apply its own spacing rules which, by default, leave more space after a full stop.
    - semi-extrinsic 7y ago
      Actually, having a slightly longer space after a sentence is common typographic practice and is done by default e.g. in LaTeX. As usual, Wikipedia has a lengthy article on the practice, which dates back to Gutenberg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sentence_spacing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sentence_spacing
_TwoFinger 7y ago
> One thing I found annoying was that it insisted on two spaces after a period. GNU Emacs' manual has a good explanation: The sentence commands assume that you follow the American typist's convention of putting two spaces at the end of a sentence. It is useful to follow this convention, because it allows the Emacs sentence commands to distinguish between periods that end a sentence and periods that indicate abbreviations.
- donio 7y ago
  Thankfully this is customizable, like everything else in Emacs (setq sentence-end-double-space nil)
sk5t 7y ago
Two spaces are a matter of some debate, in the US, and IME are preferred by academic types. For my own part, I much esteem two spaces, and judge harshly the one-spacers, yet accept without much anger the "ignorable whitespace" rules of most HTML text contexts.

by ginko 7y ago

samatman 7y ago

That's an emacs-ism, it's used for M-a and M-e, go to beginning and end of sentence. I've adopted the convention myself, because of the utility. It isn't typographically sound, but typing is not typography.

philsnow 7y ago
> [double spacing between sentences] isn't topographically sound Why not? In speech, pauses between sentences are longer than pauses between words... I've never understood this debate. But then, I'm the kind of guy who will write prose like > He shouted, "Watch out!". ... with duplicated punctuation inside the quotation marks (because they carry meaning and are part of the quotation), so clearly I don't know the MLA or whatever.
- samatman 7y ago
  It's not typographically sound. That is to say, typographers don't typeset books, newspapers, or magazine with double-spacing after a sentence. It's a style that emerged from typewriting, because it makes it easier to read monospaced text. Which is another reason I do it, I'm usually typing in a mono font even when I'm working on prose. That was my point, actually. Amusingly, the two sentences in the above paragraph have two spaces between them, as do this and the next. But you won't see it, because browsers typeset with one space between sentences.
  - globular-toast 7y ago
    They don't double space, but most will allow more space. You can double space in TeX source but TeX will apply its own spacing rules which, by default, leave more space after a full stop.
  - semi-extrinsic 7y ago
    Actually, having a slightly longer space after a sentence is common typographic practice and is done by default e.g. in LaTeX. As usual, Wikipedia has a lengthy article on the practice, which dates back to Gutenberg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sentence_spacing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sentence_spacing

_TwoFinger 7y ago

> One thing I found annoying was that it insisted on two spaces after a period. GNU Emacs' manual has a good explanation: The sentence commands assume that you follow the American typist's convention of putting two spaces at the end of a sentence. It is useful to follow this convention, because it allows the Emacs sentence commands to distinguish between periods that end a sentence and periods that indicate abbreviations.

donio 7y ago
Thankfully this is customizable, like everything else in Emacs (setq sentence-end-double-space nil)

sk5t 7y ago

Two spaces are a matter of some debate, in the US, and IME are preferred by academic types. For my own part, I much esteem two spaces, and judge harshly the one-spacers, yet accept without much anger the "ignorable whitespace" rules of most HTML text contexts.