atw: Re: Old habits

I still use double spaces between sentences.  They have some very sensible and 
robust uses that are still relevant today.  

They can avoid misinterpretation of the text if the full stop goes missing in 
action (can happen during printing, photocopying etc.).  Some sentences without 
a full stop between them can run together disparate meanings or make the double 
sentence confounding.  The extra space can signal to the reader where the break 
was supposed to be (and to give readers some credit (a rarity on this forum it 
seems), anyone who can read the text would be smart enough to work it out).

The move away from double spaces was contemporary with the trend to remove full 
stops after abbreviations etc. (eg, Dr. becomes Dr).  Fair enough, but in an 
imperfect world double spaces between sentences can have comprehensional 
utility.

Cheers,

Steve





________________________________________________________
On 28/10/2008, Kathy Bowman <Kathy.Bowman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: 
A lot of the documents I have seen lately have double spaces between sentences. 
Are they making a comeback, or am I just dealing with dinosaurs? 
cheers 
Kath

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