Spacing between sentences?

[Texas Proud]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah in SC But no women would recommend that option, and I doubt that few men would, either.

Good one... and I did not even know I was throwing a softball...

[powerplay]

This also happened on Usenet so no matter how many spaces you put between sentences it posted with one space. Does anyone remember Usenet?

[GregLee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ERD50 That'll do it, but I doubt anyone wants to insert a bunch of white "."s in their text.

It might be possible to add to the forum software an emoticon which displays as a space (preferably narrow). I looked about the Web for one but couldn't find any.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GregLee It might be possible to add to the forum software an emoticon which displays as a space (preferably narrow). I looked about the Web for one but couldn't find any.

That is still far too tedious compared to hitting the SPACE bar. From a little googling, and my successful experiment in creating a plain html file that preserves spaces w/o any coaxing, it appears to me that there is some code in the source of the web page that tells it to strip out consecutive white-spaces.

If that were set to preserve instead (which seems to be the default), we could see our posts as they were intended, rather than having them cyber-edited.

Try for yourself, save this file and then open it in your browser:

(ooops, the forum software does not support attaching an html file), so just copy/paste this into a word processor, and export as html, then open that file in your browser. If it works trhe same as it did for me, the spaces will be preserved, and as yu can see, there is nothing specifically telling it to do that. So something in the way the forum produces these pages must set something that tells it to strip the white-space.

01 spaces. Next
02 spaces.  Next
06 spaces.      Next

-ERD50

[kombat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ERD50 I created a document in LibreOffice with different spaces, exported it as html, and when my browser read the file in, all the spaces were preserved as typed.

Look at the HTML source code. It's probable that LibreOffice "knew" that you intentionally wanted all those extra spaces, so it replaced them with HTML "&nbsp;" (code for non-breaking space) characters in the HTML source file. Browsers will respect the special &nbsp; character (likewise with using the <br> tag to force a line break).

But all this is really trying to "trick" HTML into doing something it was never intended to do. HTML is a contextual markup language, not a strict formatting language. The whole idea of HTML was to allow the author to specify content and general preferences, while leaving the specific rendering up to the individual browsers themselves, so they could give whatever special treatment is necessary to display the content in a visually pleasing manner on a number of very diverse devices (everything from your computer monitor to your TV to your cell phone/iPod). Forcing 100 blanks spaces or line breaks or font sizes might look just fine on your particular computer monitor (with your particular browser and screen resolution), but it might look choppy and disjointed when rendered on a Blackberry.

There are tricks that let you specify those kinds of things, but you're not supposed to.

[GregLee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ERD50 ... there is some code in the source of the web page that tells it to strip out consecutive white-spaces.

Yes, there must be, since in some circumstances, multiple spaces are preserved. But in ordinary text (not, e.g., inside "code" tags), multiple spaces will be lost each time your local browser reformats the lines for display. I've just satisfied myself that is so by saving your post as an html file, editing it on my local system by adding some multiple spaces, then displaying that with my browser. The multiple spaces disappeared on screen. So I really think the only feasible method will be to trick the system, somehow.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kombat Look at the HTML source code. It's probable that LibreOffice "knew" that you intentionally wanted all those extra spaces, so it replaced them with HTML "&nbsp;" (code for non-breaking space) characters in the HTML source file. Browsers will respect the special &nbsp; character (likewise with using the <br> tag to force a line break). ...

OK, so I'm learning some things here. I thought the html file was very basic, but I opened in a plain text editor, and I see that LibreOffice did add a lot of formatting overhead:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1 plus MathML 2.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/Math/DTD/mathml2/xhtml-math11-f.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><!--This file was converted to xhtml by OpenOffice.org - see http://xml.openoffice.org/odf2xhtml for more info.--><head profile="http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/"><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="application/xhtml+xml; charset=utf-8"/><title xmlns:ns_1="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" ns_1:lang="en-US">- no title specified</title><meta xmlns:ns_1="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" name="DCTERMS.title" content="" ns_1:lang="en-US"/><meta name="DCTERMS.language" content="en-US" scheme="DCTERMS.RFC4646"/><meta name="DCTERMS.source" content="http://xml.openoffice.org/odf2xhtml"/><meta name="DCTERMS.creator" content="ERD50 "/><meta name="DCTERMS.issued" content="2011-10-20T08:56:50" scheme="DCTERMS.W3CDTF"/><meta name="DCTERMS.contributor" content="ERD50 "/><meta name="DCTERMS.modified" content="2011-10-20T08:57:52" scheme="DCTERMS.W3CDTF"/><meta xmlns:ns_1="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" name="DCTERMS.provenance" content="" ns_1:lang="en-US"/><meta xmlns:ns_1="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" name="DCTERMS.subject" content="," ns_1:lang="en-US"/><link rel="schema.DC" href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" hreflang="en"/><link rel="schema.DCTERMS" href="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" hreflang="en"/><link rel="schema.DCTYPE" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/" hreflang="en"/><link rel="schema.DCAM" href="http://purl.org/dc/dcam/" hreflang="en"/><style type="text/css">
	@page {  }
	table { border-collapse:collapse; border-spacing:0; empty-cells:show }
	td, th { vertical-align:top; font-size:12pt;}
	h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 { clear:both }
	ol, ul { margin:0; padding:0;}
	li { list-style: none; margin:0; padding:0;}
	<!-- "li span.odfLiEnd" - IE 7 issue-->
	li span. { clear: both; line-height:0; width:0; height:0; margin:0; padding:0; }
	span.footnodeNumber { padding-right:1em; }
	span.annotation_style_by_filter { font-size:95%; font-family:Arial; background-color:#fff000;  margin:0; border:0; padding:0;  }
	* { margin:0;}
	.Standard { font-size:12pt; font-family:Times New Roman; writing-mode:page; }
	<!-- ODF styles with no properties representable as CSS -->
	{ }
	</style></head><body dir="ltr" style="max-width:8.5in;margin-top:0.7874in; margin-bottom:0.7874in; margin-left:0.7874in; margin-right:0.7874in; writing-mode:lr-tb; "><p class="Standard">01 spaces. Next
</p><p class="Standard">02 spaces. *Next
</p><p class="Standard">06 spaces. * * *Next</p></body></html>

But I don't know enough to know what that means. I don't see the "&nbsp;" you mention, but it looks like the <p class="Standard"> may be telling it to preserve the spaces?

Quote:

Originally Posted by GregLee Yes, there must be, since in some circumstances, multiple spaces are preserved. But in ordinary text (not, e.g., inside "code" tags), multiple spaces will be lost each time your local browser reformats the lines for display. I've just satisfied myself that is so by saving your post as an html file, editing it on my local system by adding some multiple spaces, then displaying that with my browser. The multiple spaces disappeared on screen. So I really think the only feasible method will be to trick the system, somehow.

Yes, I convinced myself of that when I looked at the source (right click 'view source') on my post #2 - the spaces are there in the source, it isn't the post editor that strips them out, but something in the way it is tells the browser (or doesn't tell it) to display the spaces.


-ERD50

[TromboneAl]

1. On the iPhone app, all the spaces are still there.

2. You guys have spent way too much time on this issue -- and that's coming from me, the grammar policeman.

[samclem]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kombat But all this is really trying to "trick" HTML into doing something it was never intended to do. . . . There are tricks that let you specify those kinds of things, but you're not supposed to.

Like the "helpful" photocopy machine: Put a note on the platten, hit the green button. The machine won't copy--for reasons only it knows--"incorrect paper size", "Select desired paper source", "LP1 Error,"
etc.

JUST MAKE THE $%*&@ COPY LIKE I ASKED YOU TO!

[GregLee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl 2. You guys have spent way too much time on this issue -- and that's coming from me, the grammar policeman.

I couldn't disagree with you more. There is enough ugliness in the world without adding to it with incompetent typography. Many very talented designers over the last centuries have labored to make beautiful books. Donald Knuth, the author of The Art of Computer Programming, devoted a substantial part of his later years to the engineering and the aesthetics of the distribution of white space in text.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by samclem Like the "helpful" photocopy machine: Put a note on the platten, hit the green button. The machine won't copy--for reasons only it knows--"incorrect paper size", "Select desired paper source", "LP1 Error," etc. JUST MAKE THE $%*&@ COPY LIKE I ASKED YOU TO!

That wasn't a Federal Reserve 'note' you were trying to copy, was it? (see the other thread on not accepting cash).

I understand that copiers, printers and scanners have some built in detectors for money, and will refuse to scan/print it. Giving a detailed error message might not be the best security. Let people blame the Windows driver!

-ERD50

[kombat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ERD50 I understand that copiers, printers and scanners have some built in detectors for money, and will refuse to scan/print it.

That's true. Also, recent versions of Photoshop will not let you work with currency.

[East Texas]

Back when I was a young 'un typing class was mandatory in the 9th grade. We started out on the manuals and, when we got pretty good, progressed to the electric typewriters. One wrong tap on the space bar could send you into extra-spaces neverland. Then you had to back up and the timed words per minute went all to hell dickens. I'm not sure typing is even offered in junior high / high school any more.

As for me, I'm a one-spacer between sentences. It's what I learned and how I type today.

(On a side note: remember getting through the typing lesson early and getting to play with the "go over 15 spaces and type seven 'b's...." to make a pretty cool drawing?)

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by East Texas (On a side note: remember getting through the typing lesson early and getting to play with the "go over 15 spaces and type seven 'b's...." to make a pretty cool drawing?)

Check this out for 'ASCII ART":

Chris.com - ASCII ART - Buildings - Barn - Barns - floorplan - bathroom - House - Houses - Housing - Québec - Canada


-ERD50

[MichaelB]

Here’s an opinion (here)

Quote:

Can I let you in on a secret? Typing two spaces after a period is totally, completely, utterly, and inarguably wrong.

To back up this judgment he references typographers.

Quote:

The people who study and design the typewritten word decided long ago that we should use one space, not two, between sentences. That convention was not arrived at casually. James Felici, author of the The Complete Manual of Typography, points out that the early history of type is one of inconsistent spacing. Hundreds of years ago some typesetters would end sentences with a double space, others would use a single space, and a few renegades would use three or four spaces. Inconsistency reigned in all facets of written communication; there were few conventions regarding spelling, punctuation, character design, and ways to add emphasis to type. But as typesetting became more widespread, its practitioners began to adopt best practices. Felici writes that typesetters in Europe began to settle on a single space around the early 20th century. America followed soon after.

His conclusion

Quote:

But I actually think aesthetics are the best argument in favor of one space over two. One space is simpler, cleaner, and more visually pleasing (it also requires less work, which isn't nothing). A page of text with two spaces between every sentence looks riddled with holes; a page of text with an ordinary space looks just as it should.

[kombat]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelB Here’s an opinion (here) To back up this judgment he references typographers. Quote: A page of text with two spaces between every sentence looks riddled with holes; a page of text with an ordinary space looks just as it should.

But aesthetics, by definition, are subjective. One could just as easily argue that a page of text formatted with paragraphs looks "riddled with holes," whereas a page devoid of paragraphs looks "just as it should."

I'm a 2-spacer. It's how I learned, and I don't care enough to fight muscle memory and try and change it.

[M Paquette]

Ligatures. We has them.

(it's a typesetting geek thing, used to represent common multi-glyph sequences with a typographically correct compound glyph. Period-space is a ligature in some typefaces.)

[GregLee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelB Quote: James Felici, author of the The Complete Manual of Typography, points out that the early history of type is one of inconsistent spacing.

He should have read his reference more carefully.. Here is what Felici says about what you should do on a typewriter:

Quote:

On a typewriter, using two word spaces after a period makes sense and is, in fact, typographically the right thing to do. That's because typewriters use monospaced typefaces, in which every character has the same width. To Double-Space or Not to Double-Space... | CreativePro.com

But when using a proportional font, as most of us do use when typing into a browser, Felici concludes:

Quote:

Modern spacing aesthetics aside, the main reason not to use two word spaces (or an em space) between sentences is that people will think you're doing it out of ignorance.

Now, whatever one thinks of two word spaces between sentences, using a proportional font, it is not at all what I'm talking about.. Above, I said that in print, a space intermediate between the space used between words and two such spaces was ordinary.. Not two word spaces.. In the little example I gave above, using a trick to get more space between sentences, I did not use two word spaces -- I used a word space plus the width of a period.. I've done that here, too (it's not that much work).. My other suggestion was to use an emoticon which displays as a narrow space.

[Sarah in SC]

Refreshing change from politics, anyway.

[Janet H]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RunningBum I type in a post with the standard 2 spaces after a period, but then I look at it after submitting the post, and there's only a single period. It looks like it's happening to everyone. As a test, I'll put in 4 spaces after this sentence. Are there 4 spaces before this one? It looks like the software is removing extra spaces, but 2 spaces between sentences is standard, not 1. I think 1 makes a longer paragraph a lot less readable. Can this be fixed? I'm using Firefox 7.0.1 on Windows7.

So..... have you gotten an adequate answer? If not, and to summarize the preceding posts, the forum software strips out the extras. You can use white characters if you really need more space but all that unoccupied space increases scrolling for

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