Re: A proposed standard for CSS-controlled sentence spacing

On 1/11/13 8:36 AM, Simon Sapin wrote:
> Le 11/01/2013 01:33, Liam R E Quin a écrit :
>> On Fri, 2013-01-11 at 13:14 +1300, Robert O'Callahan wrote:
>>> I believe that the habit of typing two spaces after the end of a
>>> sentence
>>> was originally a workaround for lack of proportional letter spacing.
>> A lot of many people believe this, although in fact the practice,
>> sometimes included in the term French Spacing, predates the typewriter.
>
> FWIW, (having never really studied typography,) I never heard about
> spacing between sentences being different from any other space in French
> (my native language.)
>
> The first I heard about double spaces was about writing English in
> computers.
>
> But maybe French Spacing (with capitals) is a thing unrelated to the
> French language?

"French Spacing" originally described the narrow word-spacing that has 
been used in France between sentences for at least two centuries.  But 
somebody published a book where they got the meaning backwards, and now 
the term just spreads confusion.  I prefer the terms "word spacing" and 
"wide spacing" (or "extra spacing").

      tom