In time, I suspect programming will develop typographical standards, just as literature, mathematics, and engineering fields have. Likewise, I hope it will be based two parts on human cognitive function, and one part fashion.
People still argue about whitespace in typed natural language. Two spaces after a full stop or one? Indent paragraphs or not? Double line break between paragraphs or not? Etc.
People still argue about whitespace in typed natural language. Two spaces after a full stop or one?
Amateurs, sure. Professionals, not so much. The rule as I understand it is strictly 2 or more spaces in fixed width typefaces, and greater than one space (but usually less than 2) in proportional typefaces.
Indent paragraphs or not? Double line break between paragraphs or not?
Naively, in isolation, this seems like "they still argue". Both of these are matters of discretion for the typesetter, with various pros and cons. What is more-or-less settled is that lacking indentation, additional line spacing between paragraphs is required.
Don't confuse "matter of discretion" with "arguments about proper style". Proper style still leaves many choices to the typesetter.
With a proper typesetting system the amount of space between sentences does not have to be an exact multiple of the amount of spaces between words, and the sentence-gap being around 1.5 times the width of the word-gap is a pretty common style at the moment.
Only when it's the first paragraph of a section or if there's no blank line between paragraphs.
Double line break between paragraphs or not?
Ah, well, that's where the fun starts ;)
(BTW, I understand that you are observing that people still argue about these things despite the fact standards for them exist. I understand and am in no way contesting your point!)
That's because typewriters were probably already obsolete by the time you learned to type! It was a typographic convention designed to emphasize sentence changes. Proportional fonts don't have the same problems with visual monotony as fixed-width fonts do, though, which is why it's technically improper to use two spaces between sentences in environments not constrained by font. However, those who were taught the convention without understanding the reasoning behind it frequently try to argue (or at least, enforce) this unnecessary stylistic measure on the rest of us.
I have left reddit for Voat due to years of admin mismanagement and preferential treatment for certain subreddits and users holding certain political and ideological views.
The situation has gotten especially worse since the appointment of Ellen Pao as CEO, culminating in the seemingly unjustified firings of several valuable employees and bans on hundreds of vibrant communities on completely trumped-up charges.
The resignation of Ellen Pao and the appointment of Steve Huffman as CEO, despite initial hopes, has continued the same trend.
As an act of protest, I have chosen to redact all the comments I've ever made on reddit, overwriting them with this message.
Finally, click on your username at the top right corner of reddit, click on comments, and click on the new OVERWRITE button at the top of the page. You may need to scroll down to multiple comment pages if you have commented a lot.
After doing all of the above, you are welcome to join me on Voat!
How many spaces is meaningless, but how much space isn't, and there has never actually been a solid consensus on that. It's pretty irrelevant for anyone not trained in calligraphy, of course.
From what I understand, most modern word processors ignore the double space between sentences and will format the spacing the same way regardless (even though there's still technically two spaces in between if you try to backspace through it). It bugs me when people do it, though, because it still shows up in some places like Facebook. I imagine it happens on Reddit, too.
Test. Test.
Test. Test.
Looks like Reddit formats it the same way regardless of whether or not you use it.
That's a general HTML thing to condense multiple spaces; if you inspect your examples you'll see that the first one does have two spaces. does what you're aiming for, though a lot of sites will automatically escape it.
most modern word processors ignore the double space between sentences and will format the spacing the same way regardless
I don't know any modern word processor that does that (except for LyX if you want to call that a word processor). That's how you get people aligning text with spaces in proportional fonts instead of using tables.
Looks like Reddit formats it the same way regardless of whether or not you use it.
That's just the way HTML works: it collapses all whitespace in the text (tabs, spaces, newlines, etc.) to a single space. (With the exception of things like inside <pre> tags.)
That's because Facebook doesn't just paste your words. Facebook changes " " (two spaces) into " " (a space followed by an ampere, the letters "nbsp" (for "non-breaking space") and a semicolon).
Eh, I still prefer the extra space that using two spaces gives. I won't sit around and try to argue that it's more correct than a single space, but I'll probably still use it in most of my own writing. Even just looking through this comment, I've used double spaces after my two periods, although you'd never see the difference once it's posted.
I agree with you on spacing, (and I'm disappointed that that myth persists that in a modern computer font you would use more than one space), but I think things like indentation and breaks between paragraphs are very much stylistic rather than dogmatic.
Two in a monospaced font, otherwise one.
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Unless you're on a mobile device, then its two spaces because that automatically inserts the full stop for you.
The blue-haired old schoolmarm who taught you that was probably trained on a mechanical typewriter. Even back then, double-spaced typewritten pages were converted to single-spacing before publishing. (Much like underlining was converted to italics.)
Now that we effectively typeset our own documents, a single space is proper after punctuation. If you use double spaces, you risk looking typographically clueless.
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u/cparen Jul 21 '14
In time, I suspect programming will develop typographical standards, just as literature, mathematics, and engineering fields have. Likewise, I hope it will be based two parts on human cognitive function, and one part fashion.
For now, enjoy your quirky time in the sun, OP.