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I hate double spacing. And you can dismiss that as a personal preference, but there's a problem with it, objectively speaking. Normally, whitespace is collapsed

• jrochkind1 13y ago
  That is arguably a bug in wordpress. I've, like you, noticed that wordpress seems to change (some? all?) spaces to non-collapsing spaces (not sure exactly what mechanism is used); this article and your comment makes me curious as to why. Is it an explicit attempt to support two spaces after periods? If so, there's a way for wordpress to fix the the bug; leave most spaces alone, but convert two spaces after a period or other sentence ending puctuation (and only there) to a   or &emps;. But it's hard to say for sure this would be an improvement if we don't know what the heck wordpress is trying to do in the first place with it's odd behavior; i've never seen it documented. I also hadn't known that linotype did/does collapse whitespace (including newlines) too -- the heritage of HTML's similar behavior?
• anon1385 13y ago
  That isn't the fault of double spacing[1], it's the fault of HTML for being a shit system for typography and Wordpress for trying to fix that in a broken way (using a space followed by nbsp rather than an en-space (or whatever value of wider space you prefer)). [1] I think double is the wrong term here since most people don't actually want two full spaces, but creating anything else is too hard most of the time (or impossible on a typewriter).
• bhauer 13y ago
  That appears to be his platform replacing the space+space he typed with space+nbsp. As a fan of double spacing after sentences, in my own systems I replace space+space with nbsp+space. Attaching the non-breaking space to the previous word (opposed to the next) avoids that odd indentation behavior you've cited. Instead, it means in edge cases, the last word of a sentence might be wrapped to the next line when its width alone doesn't merit the wrap, but most readers' eyes cannot perceive that. I've found it disappointing that HTML/CSS has no ability to specify preservation of two inter-sentence spaces while retaining conventional word-wrap semantics. I suppose in some ideal world, it would not be simply "preserve" what is typed, but "detect sentences and apply my preferred spacing," allowing adjustment by the reader in a user style-sheet.
  • binarymax 13y ago
    I've found it disappointing that HTML/CSS has no ability to specify preservation of two inter-sentence spaces while retaining conventional word-wrap semantics. You can accomplish this with CSS3 white-space:pre-wrap http://codepen.io/anon/pen/haIFz http://codepen.io/anon/pen/haIFz
  • Periodic 13y ago
    You can use other HTML entities, such as     which should have a wider width while wrapping as if it were a single space.
• modarts 13y ago
  That's a little neurotic to be honest.
  • adwf 13y ago
    Yeah I tend to liken the debate over sentence spacing to the "debate" over whether a toilet seat should be left up or down. It's generally petty and irrelevant (most people don't even notice). And it's 100% an annoying discussion I'd rather not be spending even a minute of my time on.
• btilly 13y ago
  If you're going to hate over that, then I'm glad not to know you. I was taught to double space in typing class many years ago. I do it by habit now. I prefer the way it looks. In fact if you look at the source to any comment I make, you'll find that I do it by habit DESPITE the fact that I know that in many mediums it is going to get lost. I've noticed many writers that I respect doing the same thing. I'd include patio11 as an example. The fact that WordPress does the wrong thing with it is a bug in WordPress. The fact that you would hate the way that many good writers like to type, and like to see their words written, is a bug in your brain.
  • jere 13y ago
    We both have preferences. Maybe I'm exaggerating a bit on mine (it's never put me off from reading anybody, including Patrick), but this... really? >If you're going to hate over that, then I'm glad not to know you...The fact that you would hate the way that many good writers like to type, and like to see their words written, is a bug in your brain. Damn.
    • btilly 13y ago
      Really. If you hate over a preference for double spaces after periods, then I don't want to know you. Because what else would you hate over? I don't want to even think about the possibilities of facing stupid landmines like that. If you don't hate and merely have a preference, well, that's different. But hate means something specific to me.
      • sillysaurus2 13y ago
        The rules say not to say anything you wouldn't say in person. And if you'd say something like that in person, you might want to think about what kind of person that makes you. All he said was "I hate double spacing."
        • jholman 13y ago
          And all btilly said was "If [trivial aesthetic concerns cause you to experience hate], I don't want to know you." I think that's an entirely defensible position. And without knowing btilly, or having myself said this particular thing, I can easily imagine myself saying things like that in person, in some circumstances, and it's a point of personal pride. To reply to some of the other comment threads, without spawning many sub-comments, I note that "I don't want to know you" is not the same sentence as "I think you should be murdered", or something. Experiencing hatred for aesthetics may or may not be a fatal character flaw, but that's completely irrelevant.
• Chris_Newton 13y ago
  [Edit: Sorry, I replied to the wrong post. It was btilly who wrote the following quote, in another reply to the parent post.] I prefer the way it looks. And in the end, this is why so many petty typographic debates are futile. Some aspects of typography are about practical matters. The choices here tend to be quite objective, and almost everyone will agree about which choices are better, at least once they appreciate the significance of the difference. Using a programming font where some characters look too similar leads to bugs. Setting a magazine article with a huge line length and tiny font size will likely reduce reading speed and retention. Other aspects of typography are about subjective taste, a matter of art and personal design choices. This is almost always the case with trivial whitespace and punctuation issues. Does anyone really fail to understand the meaning of a post here on HN because the poster used a double-hyphen (--) as informal punctuation instead of looking up the code for a typographer’s em-dash (—)? Will anyone die if I personally set my em-dashes with a space either side in HTML because I think the “standard” tight setting looks awkward? Of course not. Sometimes a change falls between these two clear categories, and this is the case with doubling spaces after punctuation. To some extent, the basic appearance is subjective, but if the design choices result in rivers appearing in the text, this will almost certainly impair readability, an objectively worse situation. However, in these cases there is rarely a better answer than having someone who knows what they’re doing examine the specific piece of typesetting and make manual adjustments to fix the problems. It’s an exercise that I think anyone seriously interested in typography should try at least once, both to understand how easily any automated system can get things wrong in specific cases and to understand how impractically time-consuming and expensive it would be to have human operators review everything and fix all such minor details manually.
• enraged_camel 13y ago
  Yep. For an explanation of why double-spacing is objectively wrong, read this: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/space_invaders.single.html http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2011/01/...
  • mcphilip 13y ago
    Calling ignorant what is indisputably taught in many places as standard syntax is pathetically pedantic. Honestly this is the first discussion of single vs double spacing rules that I've encountered. It's been taught to me since grade school and will take more than a vitriolic Slate article to break that habit.
    • enraged_camel 13y ago
      >>It's been taught to me since grade school A good habit to get into is always question what you are taught. And if the answer you are given is, "because that's the way it has always been done," then assume it is wrong. Literally the only argument for double spacing is that it provides semantic separation. Except we already have something that does that. It's called a period. So when you are using both a period and double spacing, you are being redundant.
      • 001sky 13y ago
        A double space is Nx more area for a visual cue. N is at least 8 to 1.
        • gregors 13y ago
          Placing sentences on their own lines would even be better at offering visual cue.....oooh I see what you did there
      • deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
      • ledge 13y ago
• Dysanovic 13y ago
  I used to work at a company where my boss would demand I use double spacing. It used to drive me crazy. In my opinion one space is all that is necessary. An extra space is just redundant and a waste of space (no pun intended!)
• einhverfr 13y ago
  What you really need is something like LateX which adjusts the space following a full stop dynamically. This causes problems like detecting a full stop sometimes (consider something like St. Olaf which will look funny unless you tell LaTeX not to do this!) The fact is that the extra spacing makes stuff easier to read. It isn't usually 1 space vs 2. I think LaTeX uses more nuanced rules than that.
• mistercow 13y ago
  Here's another reason it's bad: it increases the problem of rivers in the text, degrading readability.