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>That's the function of the period, This breaks in the case of "Mr. Jones went to the store. He enjoys buying things." The spacing after 'Mr.' should be less
by asdfs 13y ago
>That's the function of the period,
This breaks in the case of "Mr. Jones went to the store. He enjoys buying things." The spacing after 'Mr.' should be less than after 'store.'. If two spaces are prohibited, you have the following options, neither of them particularly satisfactory:
-The user must input some form of special Unicode space character after 'Mr.'
-The display software must include a list of all words that, when followed by a period, should not include extra space (e.g., "Mr, Mrs, Messrs, etc, e.g, i.e" and so forth).
- anigbrowl 13y agoSays you. I was fine with it being the same when I learned to type (on a typewriter) and having text-presentation software do some micro kerning on certain abbreviations doesn't bother me in the least; automating such drudgery is one of the main reasons to use computers in the first place. A third option is to dispense with the punctuation marks on abbreviations and simply refer to 'Mr Jones.' This took a little getting used to, but since real grammatical consistency would involve abbreviating 'Mister' as 'M'r,' (a practice which you can see in some older books and which persisted with obscure words like f'c's'le) dropping the period seems simpler. It's good enough for the Economist, whose style guide I prefer.
- ezequiel-garzon 13y agoConsider 'T. S. Eliot'. I guess 'T S Eliot' could give an alternative, but it hasn't gained traction. I'm sure there are more cases.
- eru 13y agoWhat's "f'c's'le"?
- pekim 13y agoI would guess (but don't know) that it's forecastle.
- taejo 13y agoIt is indeed. Since it rhymes with "voxel", the "fo'c'sle" spelling is a much better one than "forecastle".
- jonnathanson 13y agoSure is. :) I'm a read-aloud-in-my-head kind of reader, and I remember really struggling with that one in Moby Dick. (It's "fo'c'sle," by the way, sometimes even encountered as "fo'c's'le." In the latter case, I wonder why simply writing "forecastle" wasn't the easier choice back in the day).
- ams6110 13y agoIt's closer to the actual pronunciation of "folk•sel"
- cpeterso 13y agoIn contrast, The Economist's style guide does not use periods after titles like Dr, Mr, Mrs, or Messrs: http://www.economist.com/style-guide/titles http://www.economist.com/style-guide/titles