Re: space

| From: David Perrell <davidp@earthlink.net>
| To: Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com>; www-html@w3.org
| Subject: Re: space
| Date: Sunday, September 22, 1996 6:30 PM
| 
| I think the typewriter convention was an emulation of the typesetting
| convention. I have books dating back to 1886. From then to the
mid-50s
| it was standard practice to add space between sentences, for the
simple
| reason that it was easier to follow the flow of text - especially
with
| abbr. and small type. In typesetting, though, it appears not to be a
| double space, but an em space preceding every sentence. On linotype
| machines there was not a fixed word space character. The word spacing
| was formed by wedgies that justified the line, so a double word space
| may not have been possible.
| 
| The first books I find without extra sentence spacing are cheap
| paperbacks from the mid-50s. I suspect the reason for the change in
| style was economic, not esthetic.

Thanks, I think I remember some of the HTML 3.0 space enities now,
emsp, ensp ... etc...  They could be usefull ... if a particular
browser I used supported the EM measurement at all...

Received on Sunday, 22 September 1996 21:06:28 UTC