- From: Thomas A. Fine <fine@head.cfa.harvard.edu>
- Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:35:03 -0500
- To: Simon Sapin <simon.sapin@kozea.fr>
- CC: liam@w3.org, robert@ocallahan.org, "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com>, www-style mailing list <www-style@w3.org>
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
Received on Friday, 11 January 2013 19:35:35 UTC