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Two spacing does not increase legibility of the information. That is the only meaningful metric I care about. If there are studies to show that two-spacing vs s
by knaik94 4y ago
Two spacing does not increase legibility of the information. That is the only meaningful metric I care about. If there are studies to show that two-spacing vs single spacing has a meaningful difference in how quickly a human parses or understands information, I will care about changing spacing. The author argues comfort, but because I am so used to single spacing, the two-spaced writing feels awkwardly spaced. I can't easily parse where sentences start and end. The other arguments are pointless.
I recognize people still read print, but I can safely say that 90%+ of all of the reading I have done in the past month has been digital. I don't think most people choose vim over a word editor like google docs or microsoft word when writing. The most common ebooks I read are in the epub format, which is based on html. The only pdfs I read are technical papers that are in two column format. There doesn't seem to be a place where two spacing will make a difference.
Looking at the page source shows the sentences are two-spaced. But that's not how any of the information is presented. If the author is used to it, there's no reason to change it. I believe that being trained to write the way most people write is more important.
It doesn't take much to search+replace two blank spaces with one. Going in the opposite direction is only a little more involved with having to specify a punctuation so you don't end up double spacing every word as well.
- mcswell 4y agoNor does one spacing increase legibility. I will continue to two space, because I think it looks better (and alas for those tools that ignore what I want because they thing they know better).
- knaik94 4y agoI agree that continuing to use whatever you are used to is going to be the most productive.
- mdorazio 4y agoHere you go: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29691763/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29691763/ The effect is most pronounced for double spacers like myself, for whom the exact opposite is true of your first argument.
- Dylan16807 4y ago> because I am so used to single spacing, the two-spaced writing feels awkwardly spaced. I can't easily parse where sentences start and end. That can't be common, can it? More space making it actually harder to tell where sentences end?
- knaik94 4y agoIf anyone is used to reading text based on a specific format, changing that format would affect the ability to skim the text. I am not talking about normal reading, I mean when I have to search for an idea and reference something I had seen previously in text. The spacing changes the density and the expected location. Studies so far have only been able to show that readers function better when they are already used to a specific format.
- Dylan16807 4y agoWell we're not talking about changing text you've already seen. As far as "specific format" it seems very minor to me.