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I'm Daniel Kehoe, and I participated in the brief www-talk "Space after Periods" discussion thirty years ago (as Daniel Miles Kehoe). I wrote a blog post three

I'm Daniel Kehoe, and I participated in the brief www-talk "Space after Periods" discussion thirty years ago (as Daniel Miles Kehoe). I wrote a blog post three years ago, "Personal History: Punctuating the Web (1993)," that offers more context and perspective on the discussion [0]. We discussed this on Hacker News three years ago when Microsoft Word began flagging double spaces after a period as errors [1]. That brief discussion thirty years ago still seems to arouse strong feelings for people. Today, looking back, I'm mostly amused that Guido van Rossum (the developer of the Python programming language) wanted web browsers to collapse multiple spaces to a single space after periods. Python, notably among programming languages, treats whitespace as significant. [0] https://danielkehoe.com/posts/personal-history-punctuating-the-web-1993/ https://danielkehoe.com/posts/personal-history-punctuating-t... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22975299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22975299

fsckboy 3y ago
I heard about this issue back in the 80's talking to a friend doing an early WYSIWYG word processor development project. Typeset, proportional spaced, yes, same spacing between sentences and words, and if you eyeball typeset books from the precomputer era, that's what you will see. I also looked it up in Chicago Manual of Style, and one thing I remember is, you want to get your hands on an earlier edition (for geek fun) because they have much more detail about typesetting than they do in later editions. (I don't know what the edition sweetspot is but I found a 1930's copy and I liked it) >mostly amused that Guido van Rossum...wanted web browsers to collapse multiple spaces to a single space...Python...treats whitespace as significant. this is actually pretty funny, thank you
- GoofballJones 3y ago
 I learned to type on typewriters in the late 70s. I was thrown in a typing class in high-school and I thought to myself "this is a useless class, I'm NEVER going to ever need this". Turns out it was one of the best things I learned in high-school. Anyway, I never used double spaces after periods. My typing teacher would always give me grief for it, but for whatever reason, I just never did it. As you can see, I still don't.
 - someweirdperson 3y ago
 > As you can see, I still don't. I don't think we can. Or can we?
 - antonvs 3y ago
 The period at the end of this sentence is followed by six spaces. I bet we won't be able to see them.
 - nickpeterson 3y ago
 I see them and they’re glorious.
 mcny 3y ago
 I was going to say I don't see it but then I opened inspect tool and sure enough it is all there. The period at the end of this sentence is followed by six spaces. I bet we won't be able to see them.
 antonvs 3y ago
 I used only the finest artisanal spaces.
 - deleted 3y ago
 [deleted]
 - mikestew 3y ago
 I was thrown in a typing class in high-school and I thought to myself "this is a useless class, I'm NEVER going to ever need this". Interesting, given that I specifically sought out typing class in high school in the late '70s because I was confident that there was going to be a lot of keyboard usage in my future, might as well learn to use it. And I don't want to hear whinging about subtle mechanical keyboard differences. When you learn at an under-funded rural school with manual typewriters, you also learn to appreciate anything that isn't making your fingers do mechanical printing. :-)
cantSpellSober 3y ago
> the developer of the Python programming language wanted web browsers to collapse multiple spaces to a single space Those would be trailing spaces, not the whitespace Python considers significant (indentation).
- lolinder 3y ago
  Indentation was very much included in the discussion, but you have to go back to the q2 page: http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q2/index.html#468 http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q2/index.h...
  - cantSpellSober 3y ago
    I don't see a mention of indentation there. Just: > I would like to specify that multiple spaces be interpreted as such The response is only > Isn't it a violation of the SGML philosophy This seems more relevant: > spaces and tabs at the starts of lines are ignored, and extra space after punctuation is handled separately http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q2/0470.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q2/0470.ht...
slowwriter 3y ago
To be fair, HTML treating all whitespace as insignificant was absolutely the right call
- cxr 3y ago
 It doesn't treat all whitespace as insignificant. It does, by default (for contexts where `white-space: normal` is in play) collapse how sequences are displayed—namely, that they appear just as if a single space had been used.
 - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
 so to clarify then HTML in older versions treats all whitespace as insignificant but can be overridden in combinations of newer versions HTML and CSS when interpreted by a browser that understands the styling decisions overriding the default behavior?
 - CaptainNegative 3y ago
 The <pre> tag has existed since HTML 2 for displaying preformatted/whitespace-sensitive text, and HTML 1 had the mostly similar <LISTING> tag (plus <PLAINTEXT> which is a little different).
 - cxr 3y ago
 > then HTML in older versions treats all whitespace as insignificant[...]? No. It works the way I described.
 - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
 ok well I forgot the PRE tag as CaptainNegative pointed out but when you say >No. It works the way I described. what you described made reference to white-space: normal which is a CSS property that I don't believe is available as part of the HTML standard itself (although I don't really keep up anymore so I could be wrong) but certainly wasn't part of older versions of the spec.
thaumasiotes 3y ago
> looking back, I'm mostly amused that Guido van Rossum (the developer of the Python programming language) wanted web browsers to collapse multiple spaces to a single space after periods. Python, notably among programming languages, treats whitespace as significant. It does so by collapsing any amount of space into single INDENT and DEDENT tokens, so I'm not sure what the irony is supposed to be. If the last line started with 8 spaces, Python will not distinguish between the next line starting with 10 spaces and the next line starting with 50.
- pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
 Have you ever seen a nested control structure?
- simiones 3y ago
 It's a bit funny because it's actually hard to represent Python code in regular HTML, exactly because of this collapsing. For example, here is some Python code typed correctly in the comment box but rendered without the code formatting support (using a | at beginning of line to prevent the code formatting to kick in): |def foo(flag): | if flag: | print("this is indented") | print("is this?") If you check the HTML, it looks like this: |def foo(flag): | if flag: | print("this is indented") | print("is this?")
 - distcs 3y ago
 > it's actually hard to represent Python code in regular HTML It is not hard. Just use the right tag. You want the <pre> tag here. Here, fixed it for you: def foo(flag): if flag: print("this is indented") print("is this?")
- BeetleB 3y ago
 > If the last line started with 8 spaces, Python will not distinguish between the next line starting with 10 spaces and the next line starting with 50. Perhaps I misunderstood your comment, but this is quite wrong. If I have a block that's indented at 8 spaces, and the next line is 10 spaces, but should be in the same block, it will definitely throw an IndentationError.
vintagedave 3y ago
Guido van Rossum writing: > I think it's mostly propaganda by Knuth and Kernighan (TeX and troff) that makes people want this. > Let's keep HTML simple! was unexpected. Knuth as propaganda! The discussion noted some O’Reilly books sentence-spaced, and layout software had different levels of support with TeX notably supporting it. And that’s the key: it’s a typographical layout choice. For document input, for writers, it’s a matter of markup for the output typographical layout not double-spacing per se. It’s an aesthetic choice only, similar to the spacing we add between letters, around punctuation etc. So the question is not, should we support double spacing, but: should we support this sentence spacing typographical technique? Because double spaces are an hack used to achieve layout they should not be necessary, but word processors not supporting it leads to people implementing it themselves. (If you’re a product manager, this is the sort of thing you spot to indicate a missing feature.) It gets worse on the web: because most white space is collapsed together the double-space trick doesn’t work, and it’s _very_ hard to do in CSS. Marc Andreessen’s 1993 comment ‘how is a text widget supposed to know where a sentence ends and where it doesn't? That sort of syntactic analysis we can't do...’: yes, it’s hard. English parsing is hard. Other languages are hard. I don’t believe that’s a reason not to do it any more. My website has sentence spacing [1] in CSS as a purely aesthetic choice based on a technique by Tom Fine [2, 3]. And it’s automated: I run the site text, single-spaced, through a Python script that understands sentences and marks up sentence spacing. [1] https://daveon.design/about-dave-on-design.html#typography-&-layout:-spacing https://daveon.design/about-dave-on-design.html#typography-&... [2] https://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/Tech/html-sentences.html https://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/Tech/html-sentences.html [3] http://widespacer.blogspot.com/ http://widespacer.blogspot.com/
- coxmichael 3y ago
  Nice site/typography! The bold and italics look like they’re being applied in browser though, rather than specific faces. And it’s calling out for some small caps for acronyms like ‘HTML’. Nice to see sites with this style, it’s very rare nowadays!
  - vintagedave 3y ago
    Thanks! I agree re the style -- I've attempted to make a 'spirit of the old web' (no Javascript, no tracking cookies, etc) and text-based, CSS-based site. Essentially: communicate what I want to, without the overhead that's normal in many sites today. Yes, both bold and italic are being applied by the browser, and I do need to fix that. Italic is a temporary choice because I don't like the look of EB Garamond (the current text font) in its italic face, and need to find an alternative. Bold, though, is not intentional. I've noticed the macOS and iOS stacks mimic bold differently, which is an interesting thing to have found. Excellent point re allcaps for acronyms. Should be pretty easy to add to the site generator. Thanks for the suggestion :)
qingcharles 3y ago
It's funny that such a flippant exchange is actually hugely significant for the English language. As most Roman text across the World is now consumed via HTML this brief discussion put the final nail in the coffin for the double-space-after-sentence jig. The fact that the exchange is recorded is magnificent to me. We don't have a written dialogue of the guys who decided to start putting spaces in English words in the first place... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua

fsckboy 3y ago

I heard about this issue back in the 80's talking to a friend doing an early WYSIWYG word processor development project. Typeset, proportional spaced, yes, same spacing between sentences and words, and if you eyeball typeset books from the precomputer era, that's what you will see. I also looked it up in Chicago Manual of Style, and one thing I remember is, you want to get your hands on an earlier edition (for geek fun) because they have much more detail about typesetting than they do in later editions. (I don't know what the edition sweetspot is but I found a 1930's copy and I liked it) >mostly amused that Guido van Rossum...wanted web browsers to collapse multiple spaces to a single space...Python...treats whitespace as significant. this is actually pretty funny, thank you

GoofballJones 3y ago
I learned to type on typewriters in the late 70s. I was thrown in a typing class in high-school and I thought to myself "this is a useless class, I'm NEVER going to ever need this". Turns out it was one of the best things I learned in high-school. Anyway, I never used double spaces after periods. My typing teacher would always give me grief for it, but for whatever reason, I just never did it. As you can see, I still don't.
- someweirdperson 3y ago
 > As you can see, I still don't. I don't think we can. Or can we?
 - antonvs 3y ago
 The period at the end of this sentence is followed by six spaces. I bet we won't be able to see them.
 - nickpeterson 3y ago
 I see them and they’re glorious.
 - mcny 3y ago
 I was going to say I don't see it but then I opened inspect tool and sure enough it is all there. The period at the end of this sentence is followed by six spaces. I bet we won't be able to see them.
 - antonvs 3y ago
 I used only the finest artisanal spaces.
 - deleted 3y ago
 [deleted]
- mikestew 3y ago
 I was thrown in a typing class in high-school and I thought to myself "this is a useless class, I'm NEVER going to ever need this". Interesting, given that I specifically sought out typing class in high school in the late '70s because I was confident that there was going to be a lot of keyboard usage in my future, might as well learn to use it. And I don't want to hear whinging about subtle mechanical keyboard differences. When you learn at an under-funded rural school with manual typewriters, you also learn to appreciate anything that isn't making your fingers do mechanical printing. :-)

cantSpellSober 3y ago

> the developer of the Python programming language wanted web browsers to collapse multiple spaces to a single space Those would be trailing spaces, not the whitespace Python considers significant (indentation).

lolinder 3y ago
Indentation was very much included in the discussion, but you have to go back to the q2 page: http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q2/index.html#468 http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q2/index.h...
- cantSpellSober 3y ago
  I don't see a mention of indentation there. Just: > I would like to specify that multiple spaces be interpreted as such The response is only > Isn't it a violation of the SGML philosophy This seems more relevant: > spaces and tabs at the starts of lines are ignored, and extra space after punctuation is handled separately http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q2/0470.html http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q2/0470.ht...

slowwriter 3y ago

To be fair, HTML treating all whitespace as insignificant was absolutely the right call

cxr 3y ago
It doesn't treat all whitespace as insignificant. It does, by default (for contexts where `white-space: normal` is in play) collapse how sequences are displayed—namely, that they appear just as if a single space had been used.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
 so to clarify then HTML in older versions treats all whitespace as insignificant but can be overridden in combinations of newer versions HTML and CSS when interpreted by a browser that understands the styling decisions overriding the default behavior?
 - CaptainNegative 3y ago
 The <pre> tag has existed since HTML 2 for displaying preformatted/whitespace-sensitive text, and HTML 1 had the mostly similar <LISTING> tag (plus <PLAINTEXT> which is a little different).
 - cxr 3y ago
 > then HTML in older versions treats all whitespace as insignificant[...]? No. It works the way I described.
 - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
 ok well I forgot the PRE tag as CaptainNegative pointed out but when you say >No. It works the way I described. what you described made reference to white-space: normal which is a CSS property that I don't believe is available as part of the HTML standard itself (although I don't really keep up anymore so I could be wrong) but certainly wasn't part of older versions of the spec.

thaumasiotes 3y ago

> looking back, I'm mostly amused that Guido van Rossum (the developer of the Python programming language) wanted web browsers to collapse multiple spaces to a single space after periods. Python, notably among programming languages, treats whitespace as significant. It does so by collapsing any amount of space into single INDENT and DEDENT tokens, so I'm not sure what the irony is supposed to be. If the last line started with 8 spaces, Python will not distinguish between the next line starting with 10 spaces and the next line starting with 50.

pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
Have you ever seen a nested control structure?
simiones 3y ago
It's a bit funny because it's actually hard to represent Python code in regular HTML, exactly because of this collapsing. For example, here is some Python code typed correctly in the comment box but rendered without the code formatting support (using a | at beginning of line to prevent the code formatting to kick in): |def foo(flag): | if flag: | print("this is indented") | print("is this?") If you check the HTML, it looks like this: |def foo(flag): | if flag: | print("this is indented") | print("is this?")
- distcs 3y ago
 > it's actually hard to represent Python code in regular HTML It is not hard. Just use the right tag. You want the <pre> tag here. Here, fixed it for you: def foo(flag): if flag: print("this is indented") print("is this?")
BeetleB 3y ago
> If the last line started with 8 spaces, Python will not distinguish between the next line starting with 10 spaces and the next line starting with 50. Perhaps I misunderstood your comment, but this is quite wrong. If I have a block that's indented at 8 spaces, and the next line is 10 spaces, but should be in the same block, it will definitely throw an IndentationError.

vintagedave 3y ago

Guido van Rossum writing: > I think it's mostly propaganda by Knuth and Kernighan (TeX and troff) that makes people want this. > Let's keep HTML simple! was unexpected. Knuth as propaganda! The discussion noted some O’Reilly books sentence-spaced, and layout software had different levels of support with TeX notably supporting it. And that’s the key: it’s a typographical layout choice. For document input, for writers, it’s a matter of markup for the output typographical layout not double-spacing per se. It’s an aesthetic choice only, similar to the spacing we add between letters, around punctuation etc. So the question is not, should we support double spacing, but: should we support this sentence spacing typographical technique? Because double spaces are an hack used to achieve layout they should not be necessary, but word processors not supporting it leads to people implementing it themselves. (If you’re a product manager, this is the sort of thing you spot to indicate a missing feature.) It gets worse on the web: because most white space is collapsed together the double-space trick doesn’t work, and it’s _very_ hard to do in CSS. Marc Andreessen’s 1993 comment ‘how is a text widget supposed to know where a sentence ends and where it doesn't? That sort of syntactic analysis we can't do...’: yes, it’s hard. English parsing is hard. Other languages are hard. I don’t believe that’s a reason not to do it any more. My website has sentence spacing [1] in CSS as a purely aesthetic choice based on a technique by Tom Fine [2, 3]. And it’s automated: I run the site text, single-spaced, through a Python script that understands sentences and marks up sentence spacing. [1] https://daveon.design/about-dave-on-design.html#typography-&-layout:-spacing https://daveon.design/about-dave-on-design.html#typography-&... [2] https://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/Tech/html-sentences.html https://hea-www.harvard.edu/~fine/Tech/html-sentences.html [3] http://widespacer.blogspot.com/ http://widespacer.blogspot.com/

coxmichael 3y ago
Nice site/typography! The bold and italics look like they’re being applied in browser though, rather than specific faces. And it’s calling out for some small caps for acronyms like ‘HTML’. Nice to see sites with this style, it’s very rare nowadays!
- vintagedave 3y ago
  Thanks! I agree re the style -- I've attempted to make a 'spirit of the old web' (no Javascript, no tracking cookies, etc) and text-based, CSS-based site. Essentially: communicate what I want to, without the overhead that's normal in many sites today. Yes, both bold and italic are being applied by the browser, and I do need to fix that. Italic is a temporary choice because I don't like the look of EB Garamond (the current text font) in its italic face, and need to find an alternative. Bold, though, is not intentional. I've noticed the macOS and iOS stacks mimic bold differently, which is an interesting thing to have found. Excellent point re allcaps for acronyms. Should be pretty easy to add to the site generator. Thanks for the suggestion :)

qingcharles 3y ago

It's funny that such a flippant exchange is actually hugely significant for the English language. As most Roman text across the World is now consumed via HTML this brief discussion put the final nail in the coffin for the double-space-after-sentence jig. The fact that the exchange is recorded is magnificent to me. We don't have a written dialogue of the guys who decided to start putting spaces in English words in the first place... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scriptio_continua