4 ms·
Two spaces are a convention that arose when monospaced fonts were the norm. Now that proportional fonts are the norm, it's just an artifact. CMOS deals with pro
by geepers 18y ago
Two spaces are a convention that arose when monospaced fonts were the norm. Now that proportional fonts are the norm, it's just an artifact. CMOS deals with professional publishing, where one space was always the norm.
- wmf 18y agoTwo spaces are a convention that arose when monospaced fonts were the norm. Now that proportional fonts are the norm, it's just an artifact. This was my first thought as well, but why? A monospaced space is larger than a proportional space, so if you used two monospaced spaces, maybe now you should use three proportional spaces. Instead the space between sentences has gotten much smaller.
- puns 18y agoIt's not so much the size of the space, but how tightly the letters of each word are kerned. In a proportional font, all the letters in a word are more tightly packed together, making each word appear as a more separated object. This in turn makes spaces between words easier to see.
- jacobolus 18y agoAnd depending on the typeface/typesetter, sentences might also be set with more space after them than is normally between words, though it's quite unlikely to be twice as much. (TeX will do this, for example.)