Double Spaced

2008-01-10 : rambling

In one week, I think I’ve managed to cure myself of my inexplicable muscle memory to use double spaces between sentences. I’ve been doing this since I was first taught to type, so it took a while, and my paragraphs still look funny to me.

1. On the iphone, there’s an option that double space inserts a period and a space instead. Unrelated, perhaps, but amusing to me.

   
   — Kyle    11 January 2008    #

2. Why did you want to break that habit?

   
   — Sarah    11 January 2008    #

3. Because modern kerning covers the need for a double-space. The double-space is a leftover from fixed-width typewriter fonts.

   It may still have applicability to Courier.

   
   — Bill    11 January 2008    #

4. Kyle, the double-space to get period-space thing is just because it’s easier to press the space bar twice than having to do whatever you do on the iphone to get to the period. Blackberries do the same thing so that you can avoid pressing alt-M, then space.

   
   — Casey    11 January 2008    #

5. Bill is correct. The double-space habit is appropriate for monospaced fonts and un-kerned type, but for properly typeset text and proportional fonts with a good (to be fair, this is a pretty hefty assumption) hinting/kerning setup, it destroys the natural flow of the type.

   
   — Aaron N. Tubbs    11 January 2008    #