Re: [xml2rfc] Word enforcing 1 space between sentences

[Robert Moskowitz <[e-mail]>]

On 4/30/20 3:58 PM, Carsten Bormann wrote:
> Hi Bob,
>
>> On 2020-04-28, at 21:12, Robert Moskowitz <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>> I recently saw a fluff piece about MS Word now enforcing 1 space between sentences.  If you put in 2 you get the terrible squiggly line (which you can always turn off with a right-click, ignore all).
> As Bret said, this probably can be configured.
>
>> The argument for single space is the font handles inter-sentence spacing just fine as mono-spacing went out with the typewriter....
> Well, this is a long story I don't want to re-tell here.
> Let's just say that there are some typographic fashions that don't respect the prime directive: Legibility.
> I tend to ignore those.
>
> But as Bill notes, the question of typographic presentation is somewhat distinct from the keyboarding convention.
> People who expertly keyboard manuscripts for usage by document processing systems always try to indicate where sentence ends are and where they aren't.
> The document processing system can then decide on the presentation style of the day.
>
> A double space is a conventional signal for keyboarding a sentence end; it has been for half a century now.
> As is a newline.
>
> I am (and I'd want to believe most people who have been using document processing systems since the 1970s are) used to the latter: end each sentence with a newline.

Hemingway would have had a tough time with this.  Not Faulkner or Conrad 
(in "the Niger of the Narcissus" there is a sentence a page long and it 
reads beautifully, but it can take a few readings to get all the imagery 
from it).

I will still pull my copy of "Typhoon" from the shelf and reread it.  I 
never did like "Lord Jim", his earlier works IMHO were much better.  Ah, 
the age of sail just at its end.

Put those in your document processing systems.

> Look, ma, no double spaces in the manuscript, and still clearly indicated sentence ends!
> (And look how much more readable the message becomes that way.
> And, you'll notice, your git diffs do, too!)
>
> Grüße, Carsten
>