[Groff] Double spacing after full stop (was: new automake system)

[Bertrand Garrigues]

Hello Clarke,

On Sat, Oct 04 2014 at 02:54:51 AM, Clarke Echols <address@hidden> wrote:
> Two spaces at end of sentence is standard US usage on typewriters, and
> has been for a century or longer.
>
> But when Microsoft came along with Word, they apparently decided to use
> a single space that's the same as inter-word spacing.  The book
> printing industry hasn't always been consistent, from what I can tell,
> but I found a magazine from 1950 where the spacing after the stop at
> the end of the sentence is a bit wider than between words, though it's
> hard to tell with spacing varied by left- and right-hand margins both
> being adjusted.

Interesting.  Most of the articles I found on the subject say that
double-spacing after a full stop is bad, old-fashioned, and came only
because typewriters used monospaced type and thus end of sentences where
harder to spot.  I found a few articles that defend the use of
double-spacing and try to demonstrate that a wide space after a full
stop was the usage 300 years ago in English books.  Here are a some
interesting links:

http://theworldsgreatestbook.com/how-many-spaces-after-a-period/
http://www.heracliteanriver.com/?p=324


> In the magazine, the end-of-sentence appears to be about 1.2 or perhaps
> 1.4 times the word spacing.  I use the groff ".ss" request to set my
> end-of-sentence spacing to 1.66 times inter-word spacing.

Thanks for the tip, I'll try this, or mom's .SS request.

Regards,

--
Bertrand Garrigues