Talk:Sentence spacing

Proposal for new title

The present title is not only awkward, long-winded, and very unlikely to be searched for – it also describes only one way of spacing sentences (the "wrong" way). The result is an article that looks more like an attempt to persuade than an encyclopaedic article discussing the different ways in which sentences have been and are (and should be) spaced. It would be better to rename it Sentence spacing. This would be a much better title for an article describing both single- and double-spacing conventions, and it would more accurately reflect the balance of the article. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 10:15, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. I have been thinking about this a bit recently. The title has to change. I have a few ideas, generally in order of preference:

Inter-sentence spacing. "Sentence spacing" is simpler but could refer to the spacing within a sentence as well, both between words as well as between characters. In some niche study areas, it could even be between "phrase segments" within sentences.

Spacing after a sentence. Could be used. I'd still rank this below "Inter-sentence spacing," but above the items below since it would be more likely to be searched for by the average user.

Terminal punctuation spacing. Maybe more concise, but not sure how many "average" folks will know the term "terminal punctuation." Theoretically, it could refer to spacing before terminal punctuation as well. For grammarians, there isn't really much discussion about that—even in international countries that use English. For typographers, it can mean something, since different kerning variations are possible among various characters, and punctuation could generate a different kerning value before terminal punct. in a specific font—theoretically.

Spacing after terminal punctuation. This is more comprehensive, but is probably more unwieldy than the current title.

Sentence period spacing. I don't like this one much. It's the name of of a group that is currently conducting studies on this issue. I think the idea they were trying to convey (although they didn't say why they chose this name) is a sequential theme: (1) Sentence, (2) Period, (3) Spacing. Of course, this ignores question and exclamation marks. I suppose it could be "Sentence punctuation spacing" but I'm not a big fan of this one since it doesn't lend itself well to a "search" by the average English speaker. Maybe there's a better variant.

The first two are probably the best choices. Even though "Inter-sentence spacing" is more accurate, the "inter" part might make a search tougher though. I think that as long as the words "spacing" and "sentence" are in the title, it should be OK, but I'm not that familiar with Internet seach protocols, so I don't know if the "Inter-" would throw something off. There are a lot of Websites that currently link to the title of this article, so keeping the words "spacing" and "sentences" at least is probably important.

I'm sure I'm missing other ideas—maybe even the best option.

I think the first or second ones are probably the best choices without seeing other better ideas. I'd like to hear your opinion on it. I'm making a big push this week to include the rest of my reseach into this article, so I can return to my projects intended for "paper" publication. I'm planning on contributing the rest of my reseach in terms of the spacing between sentences in general, not specifically toward the "double spacing idea." So, I'm fine making a change immediately. Nice to have a second, common sense check though. Let me know what you think.

Also, the mess of information in the second half of the article has to be synthesized as well. I have a very few contributions in those areas, so if you have ideas in that area, feel free to step in. Airborne84 (talk) 16:10, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

The correct title would be sentence spacing. The spacing between letters within a word is called letter spacing, the spacing between words is called word spacing, the spacing between sentences is called sentence spacing, the spacing between lines is called line spacing... (and you can guess what the spacing between paragraphs is called). Simple – and this is all standard industry terminology, not just my opinion! SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 16:29, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, if it's that simple, I'm all for it. Let me do a little research on that. Just want to make sure there isn't any other ambiguity that could exist. I'll also check the "old" talk posts since there was some discussion on this before. Again, I'm fine in principle with that title. I just want to make sure that the change made is final because it's truly the best option. There are a lot of links that have to get updated to change the title... Thanks. Airborne84 (talk) 16:52, 31 March 2010 (UTC)

I reviewed some of the books on typography I have on hand. They don't all use the term "sentence spacing," but that's not a big issue. The key issue would be if there was any ambiguity with that wording. I don't see an issue, so I'm a big fan of the title "Sentence spacing." Another benefit is that there is no need for any "double spacing" disambiguation now (as in double spacing of lines), if there was before. Feel free to make the change immediately. There's probably a way to identify what articles link to this one. If not, off the top of my head, I can think of WP:MoS and Full Stop. I'm sure there are others within Wikipedia. Some redirects may need to be adjusted and created too. If the terms noted above aren't listed in redirects, they probably all merit creation (except maybe the last one, "Sentence Period Spacing"). If you don't want to make the change to the title, I'll do it later this week. Thanks for the input! Airborne84 (talk) 03:42, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Move accomplished. Some editing required to make the article fit the new title better. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 06:31, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the assist! I can take it from here if you're just passing through. Or, let me know if you want to dig in and I'll paste my tentative outline and thoughts here. I'll be doing a complete overhaul in the next 36 hours, so you can work on anything you'd like here or just come back in a day or two and (hopefully) see a much better article and give it a common sense check. I'm signing off for a few hours though. Cheers! Airborne84 (talk) 06:54, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Best for me (busy IRL) is to come back after you're done and look over it. I will leave it alone for a few days. Overhaul away! (But is there any way you can make it all a bit shorter? The article is off-puttingly long, and in places it is rather wordy. I'm sure there is scope for tightening and shortening.) I'll not do anything for 72 hours. SNALWIBMA ( talk - contribs ) 07:01, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

We're both thinking the same way. My plan is to synthesize by estimation before plugging in the remaining sections in my tent. outline (studies, readability/legibility on either side, controversy/public opinion, photos, etc. and then crunch the second half as much as possible while retaining relevant data. Once that plays out, I'll see what it looks like and then keep crunching until it's a size and shape that might work for an FA here. Thanks again. Airborne84 (talk) 07:13, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Page overhaul

I'm probably just talking to myself again. But oh well.

However, I made a major overhaul. If you contributed material that was deleted (mostly only unsourced material was deleted) or was synthesized, my apologies. It was just getting to look almost like a coatrack (with my contributions as well, in some cases). Take a look at an example of a Featured Article to see why I did what I did.

If you feel you need to re-add material, please try to not just slap a new section header and a new section in. Try to make it fit in within the text, as opposed to a separate section. However, the article is at max capacity now, so it still needs to be shaved.

It might be better to split the "Style guide" section off, but not sure if it will be notable by itself. If that's not going to work, I'll drill down the first sections and shave off the lower priority stuff. I need to reduce the size of each of the earlier sections after the lede a bit anyway.

The sentence spacing controversy needs a complete overhaul too. I have the material to do it. A few photos coming too. I just ran out of time today. It'll be back to a trickle for a while. Maybe it's at an A-class article now though.

Finally, I don't WP:OWN this article. But please be careful about making wording changes that could feasibly diverge from the sources I used. I didn't play semantic games to push a POV, I just picked my wording in some cases to encompass the widest variety of sources possible. Changing wording might reduce the number of possible sources from five to two, for example, but it would still require me to go in and recheck the sources and remove the ones that are no longer applicable. If there is wording that seems POV and it might fall into the above category, let me know, or just change it carefully. On the other hand, I understand that some wording seems strong, but it was probably the exact or paraphraed wording used by the sources. Airborne84 (talk) 11:34, 2 April 2010 (UTC)

Article Split

Planning to split "History of sentence spacing." I believe it meets WP:N criteria. Although the article length is also due to the endnotes and reference list, It's still too long for easy reading. Although splitting the list of style guides might also make sense, I'm not sure the new article would meet the criteria discussed in WP:N. Airborne84 (talk) 22:58, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Style Guides - Split: Discuss

At least one other editor has mentioned that this article is too long. It's a reasonable observation. I believe that the "style guide" section would be better split into a separate article—with its contents summarized here in a paragraph or two. Benefits:

1. Reduces the amount of "United States" study guide material in this article relative to international style guides—thus contributing to this article meeting WP:WORLDVIEW, by not providing undue weight to the United States.

2. Allows the expansion of material within the style guides in a new article.

3. Reduces the size and length of this article, making it easier to "digest."

However, is this topic notable enough under WP:N to split? If so, what should it be called? List of style guides: Sentence spacing(?) The name would also drive whether it meets the notability criteria under WP:N. Airborne84 (talk) 04:17, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Endnote consistency

No problem with the Chicago endnote expansion. I had considered it myself except that I didn't want to put too much focus on U.S. style guides. Happy to keep it. I just combined the three notes into one—separated by semicolons—to keep it consistent with the rest of the endnotes. I had to do that earlier because in some cases I had 5+ "blue" endnote markers to mark a single inline citation. One actually had nine, I think. I decided to drop all down to a single endnote per citation, that listed multiple references within—if appropriate. Airborne84 (talk) 22:42, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

Education

[Repasted from above] absolutely must not answer the question..... I disagree. The Wikipedia's purpose is to document both the historical data and provide accurate present day information. 1) First, it should be made clear that the double-space is primarily an issue in the US only. The controversy does not exists in other parts of the world. It doesn't exist (at least during past 30 years) in education in other English speaking countries like UK or Australia. To my knowledge, there has never been a Government education program in countries outside of US that would have taught "double spacing" grammar rules; the isolated cases e.g. in the UK have been mostly in the past affected by separate typewriter classes — a skill, which was not part of the curriculum per se. I believe not even in Canada have had that in curriculum, but please correct if I'm mistaken. 2) Because this is mostly a US centered topic, there is nothing wrong in presenting accurate present day information for the US readers visiting the page. If I understand correct, in the US there is no single common curriculum of writing taught in the elementary schools that would be imposed by the government. This seems to be a major difference from the rest of the world where Government policies are carried out in every school. Therefore, in the US, an individual teacher may have adopted a style, one way or other--possibly influenced by tradition, to teach single or double space rules. Which is the the source of current confusion of the "tradition", and its value in present times. However, there are norms in the present day public communication. These can be derived from three sources: the Government guidelines, the Academic publishing guidelines and from the publishing industry. E.g. did you know that Supreme Court rulings, or Federal legislation, or briefs filed by the US Solicitor General follow the Style Manual by US Government Printing Office (The GPO Style) where "single space" is the norm. This is usually a shock to law firms of which many still believe that "two space" is more appropriate in legal matters. While US government have not had a common curriculum —in some sense — the GPO Manual would have been the closest what the education sector could have followedx. However, there are norms in the higher education — in he academic — sector and in the commercial publishing industry. These define styles what are acceptable; and the end product artifacts are the printed history, if you will. The service the Wikipedia is doing is to collect and document each sectors' sources. What have the authoritative sources said about the spacing in the past and what do they say about it now in the 21th century? Please go ahead and collect what are the guidelines for publishing industry: the Chicago Manual of Style (CMS), the Associated Press Style Guide (AP Style) etc; the major guidelines for the academic sector: Modern Language Association (MLA), Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA Style), AMA Manual of Style--A Guide for Authors and Editors (American Medical Association, AMA Style); english guidelines outside of US: The Oxford Style Manual aka The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (UK), Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers (AGPS Style, Australian Government). Let's also include the most influential and authoritative english books: The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst ("the bible"), The Complete Manual of Typography by James Felici ("bible class"), The Blue Book Guide to Grammar & Punctuation by Jane Strauss (also in the "bible class"), The Copyeditor's Handbook--A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications by Amy Einsohn (possibly redundant because mostly based on CMS). --User:jaalto 2010-04-26 18:49

I copied this here because that thread above was for a version of the article that was entirely different than the current version. It's been completely revised—to include a name change. A few comments:

• I don't know about education systems across the board. I'd guess that in the UK, they taught double spacing in typing class. I know it was done in Canada because I asked some Canadians and they confirmed. Can't put OR in the article based on that though. It may be a US centered topic, but I didn't define it that way because "French spacing" and "English spacing" (primarily referring to the current UK) are important terms regarding this topic. Besides, many of the works (esp. typography) cover many languages and alphabets, so are not restricted to English or the United States, regardless of where they were published.
• Some of what you mention about previous editions of key style guides would be useful - but more so in the History of sentence spacing and the Sentence spacing: Language and style guides articles. This article is intended to give an overview of the contemporary picture, while providing some historical context. So, I used the most current versions of most works, unless they contributed to the historical context (or analysis). And many of the works mentioned above were included in the article (see Bibliography). What they say is spelled out more in Sentence spacing: Language and style guides. I split that article out to reduce the US focus on this article IAW WP:WORLDVIEW. Airborne84 (talk) 17:20, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

REFs

Recent edits have removed all references to site http://spacewaste.wordpress.com/ based on it being "blog".I don't see the justification as other book authors like James Felici also keep blogs. The people behind the spacewaste are John Wills Lloyd and Dan Hallahan -- Both notable academic figures; with Lloyd having a Ph.D degree and having published hundread-plus items through 1975-2008 (Homepage http://people.virginia.edu/~jwl3v/ and see also http://ldblog.com/about-ldblog/). The issues they raise in the spacewaste are valid academic questions about the APA 6th edition, because the page analyses the APAs motivations to see if there is backing for the "two space" recommendation introduced in recent revision. This is valid critical argument and I don't see why the page shouldn't be referenced in Wikipedia. An example quote that was removed from the references: During times when many disciplines that recommend the APA’s Publication Manual [6th ed., 2009] are advocating evidence-based decisions, it’s noteworthy, we think, that these discussions of the rationale for using two spaces at the end of sentences (and after colons) do not appear to be based on scientific examination of the hypothesis that two spaces makes manuscripts more readable. We have to admit that we haven’t employed the most rigorous search methods in seeking evidence, but we’ve searched for studies comparing readability when one or two spaces follow sentence-ending punctuation, and we simply haven’t found any studies of the hypothesis. The quote looks valid one and candidate for next to discussion about the APA. Btw, the recent APA 6th edition is very exceptional remembering that the previous editions recommended one space. --jaalto 2010-04-27

My apologies, they don't make it at all apparent that they're behind the blog; only with some digging was I able to confirm that they are (which they only do via a comment on another blog; the only corroboration is that the APA bloggers seem to believe it's indeed them). --Cybercobra (talk) 07:16, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

No problem, the important things is verifiability. Thanks --jaalto 2010-04-27

Just for the record for other readers, the identity of these men can be verified at blog.apastyle.org where “JohnWillsLloyd said... Ms. Wiederkehr, thanks for raising the matter of dot-matrix printers. I was thinking about them earlier today and mentioned them in a SpaceWaste [...] I hope to return to the topic later in our blog. [...] Couldn't agree more with Lester--the new manual is enjoyable, much more so than the 5th. The streamlining really adds to its utility. It's just too bad the authors changed back to two spaces. As the discussion on SpaceWaste indicates, the change appears arbitrary: http://spacewaste.wordpress.com/ And from talking with colleagues, I think it's a good guess that many will do what Amy's going to do--not change.” See also comment in in other place: “We write to inform you that we have just activated the following website: http://spacewaste.wordpress.com/ As you’ll see, the focus is on the APA Manual (6th ed.) and its reference to the use of two spaces at the end of sentences. We hope you take this action in the spirit in which it’s intended—to promote healthy discussion of the pros and cons of what we think is a troublesome change from the previous edition of the Manual. You’ll see our questions and concerns emerge over the next few days. We invite you to join in the dialogue. --Dan Hallahan, John Lloyd”. Out of interest the originating APA blogger at blog.apastyle.org is in high position: she is Sarah Wiederkehr, Editorial Supervisor at American Psychological Association at Washington D.C. Metro Area. She also keeps blog at typepad.com --jaalto 2010-04-27

Peer review complete

Thanks for adding some critical eyes to the article. It's greatly appreciated. You may be doing this already, but Ruhrfish conducted a peer review and left some great comments. I was glad to see this since her/his user page [1] indicates she/he has some experience in this area. Please feel free to address these comments listed at: [2] although I will get to them eventually.

As far as the consistency in quotes, I had used a "full cite" for the first instance of each source in the endnotes. After Ruhrfish's comment on that, I decided that the existence of a Bibliography is probably enough, since the "short cites" are linked to the Bibliography. It might be better to just make them all short cites. Thoughts? Airborne84 (talk) 14:36, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

French spacing in lede

When I first started working on this article (January, I think), the lede (and article) had a massive amount of confusing and contradictory information regarding French spacing. I removed the confusing part from the lede and moved the data about it to the latter parts of the article (digital age now, I think). That's not to say it couldn't reasonably be added back to the lede. I'd suggest it needs to be done carefully though:

• 1. Is it necessary for the lede? Maybe. The lead should have the following:

It should define the topic, establish context, explain why the subject is interesting or notable, and summarize the most important points—including any notable controversies.

If the French spacing ambiguity doesn't add to the lede, and isn't one of the most important points, maybe it should be left out to be addressed later.

• 2. Is it returing the lede to "wordy prose"? The article just went through a peer review and Ruhrfish and one other overhauled the lede and first few sections to reduce the wordiness. I just want to be careful about reintroducing wordiness before we get this to an FAC again.

The French spacing link is in the lede now to point readers to that section. I don't know if we need to discuss the history of French spacing and the confusion regarding it in the lede here. If the other editors want to reintroduce it, let's just discuss the best way to do so so the FAC review doesn't end up with people bringing up the same points about wordiness. Airborne84 (talk) 15:06, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

The French spacing link is in the lede now to point readers to that section. Actually, it doesn't; the link is broken because there is no such section with the title it uses presently. --Cybercobra (talk) 15:22, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Someone must have fixed it. It refers to that section in History of sentence spacing now. Airborne84 (talk) 20:41, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Praise the anonymous WikiGnomes! The talk pages have eyes! --Cybercobra (talk) 20:45, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

I think some sort of adequate explanation of the french spacing term would be appropriate. This is because that term is loaded, it means different things to different people and the article needs to define what is its primary meaning here (or what Wikipedia considers its primary meaning). It appears that there is great confusion judging from the many discussion in the Internet. --jaalto 2010-04-28

That's fair enough. My concern is only that we don't try to develop it too much in the lede so that we reintroduce the "overwriting" charge that was leveled at this article during its last FAC go-round (hopefully we can get it to a viable FAC soon). I think one sentence in the lede that covers it might sufficient? This may also need to be explained better within the body of this article or in the History of sentence spacing article. I think there was once a French spacing article, but it was combined into this one. It's also permissible for us to put a French spacing link in for an article that hasn't been created (we'd have to kill the French spacing redirect page to this one). It would show up as a "red" link in most people's browsers. I wouldn't want to do that in the lede of this article, but it might get a reader interested in writing the article if it was in the text of one of these related articles. Anyway, I'll think about how to describe French spacing in the lede here later today. If you'd like to take a crack at it, feel free. I'm just trying to balance completeness on this topic with the FAC comments (see top of discussion page for link). The biggest thing I got from that and from Ruhrfish's peer review was to be brutal about removing anything that is on the periphery and not directly related—to pare down the prose in this article. Airborne84 (talk) 15:40, 28 April 2010 (UTC)

Text comparison images - lede

It seems we need a different text image/examples in the lede. That's fine. However, the one I posted took a bit of time to find and make, so rather than me just going back to the drawing board, please let me know what would make a useful lede (and any other) image. I'll be happy to make it.

Do you mean that the sentence spacing examples weren't good choices? For example, I could have compared double-spaced typewritten type with single spaced type, and then chosen an older "em-quadded" example for the history. Or do you mean that the examples should be full pages? Or something else?

I could find an example of U.S. government-printed text (single sentence spaced) and compare it to a left-justified typewritten page from the same era (probably early 1900's) to show the difference. I hate to use just English/U.S. text, but the U.S. govt. documents are easiest for me to find IRT copyright laws. I have a public domain German-language em-quadded text example that could be used for the history.

Thanks. Airborne84 (talk) 12:52, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

I think the left side was fine, but the em-quad spacing on the right side was too similar. I think typewriter single-spacing would have been better. Also, the background color difference detracted from it. I commend you on the attempt though, as finding good examples is obviously not easy. --Cybercobra (talk) 19:51, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, what I'll do is use the (left side) 1949 double-spaced typewritten example, and pull a single-spaced U.S. government typeset text example (from the GPO) for the right. That will compare the sentence spacing between 20th century typewritten and "professionally printed" text. Also, using two documents from the same year/era might be more meaningful. I wasn't sure that using a single-spaced example was useful since the article itself is single-spaced. But having an example from print will be a plus, now that I've considered it a bit more (for a few reasons). Point taken about the color difference. I thought it was an interesting example because it also showed the antiquated custom of using spaces before colons and semi-colons as well.

I think I'll use the em-quadded German-text example that I have in the History section as a stand-alone. I think going with German text instead of the "right side" example I posted before will help mitigate the WP:Worldview objections received in the first FAC. Airborne84 (talk) 21:44, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion for lede image

If I might make a suggestion, how about using this image (right) I created? One issue I have with the current image (government text) is that they are not the same content; thus it becomes similar with comparing apples to oranges since one cannot readily see the difference between single and double sentence-spacings. Furthermore, JPG files has issues with re-sizings (thus text images are not recommended to be in JPG (ref:Wikipedia:Image use policy). Jappalang (talk) 22:31, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much for taking the time to make the image. I'm hesitant for a couple of reasons to make the switch. (1) Both of the examples in the new image use a monospaced font. I contrasted proportional and monospaced fonts in the article, but the lede image is the only visual example of both next to each other (short of pointing out that the article text itself is proportional), (2) The upper "typewriter" text is a decent illustration of the "river effect" and shows examples of other typewriter conventions—such as the use of three hyphens to approximate an em dash. These examples are all discussed throughout the article, and the current lede image illustrates them—as part of the lede's summary of the article.

Having said that, there are other editors who watch this page and chime in from time to time. If they prefer this image, I'll be happy to make the change. Or they can simply make the change themselves, of course.

If there is no consensus for change, would it still be advisable to change the .jpeg format of the current lede image to another file format?

And thanks again for your interest in this article, as well as your feedback on the Featured Article nomination page for this article. It is appreciated. --Airborne84 (talk) 02:24, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

No problems. The advice for images that have text is to use either SVG or PNG. In this case, you can convert those images into PNG, which scales better than JPG. Jappalang (talk) 06:57, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Lede image

I tried pretending I have a small monitor and increased the font size a few times while looking at the lede. The lede image crunches the text on its left very small. I know some people that use "mini" laptops that would probably see the same thing at "normal" font size. Think it's OK to disregard the guideline about placement of the lede image given the dimensions of this one. Thoughts? Airborne84 (talk) 06:37, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Added FAQ Page

If there are more evident questions out there, please add them. If there is a question that might bear adding but you don't know the answer, post it here and I'll probably be able to answer/add it. --Airborne84 (talk) 21:19, 25 May 2010 (UTC)

What are you proposing here? The addition of an "FAQ" section to the article? Wikipedia articles should not have "FAQ" sections. --Zarel (talk⋅c) 01:00, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

No, Air is referring to Talk:Sentence_spacing/FAQ and the associated template at the top of this page. --Cybercobra (talk) 01:03, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I was unclear about that. Thanks for clarifying Cybercobra. --Airborne84 (talk) 02:55, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

"Transition to single spacing" section dubious?

The first sentence needs more authoritative references. In the second sentence uncited "various possible reasons" looks weasel. The central claim that "the monospaced typewriter grid was broken in 1941" is seriously dodgy. IBM announced a proportional product in 1941 but their first physical device was in 1944 [IBM typewriter milestones and it was a niche product for its whole life anyway. The penultimate sentence claims "the computer gradually replaced the typewriter as the primary method of creating text" but doesn't mention the advent of proportional spacing for computer output (e.g. Diablo, Qume, IBM 6/640, Xerox Star/3700/9700, 24-pin dot matix etc). This section is not FA quality: IMO the history of how office products moved to proportional spacing should appear in Computer font or Typeface, rather than being incomplete original research in Sentence spacing. - Pointillist (talk) 22:43, 26 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, this section was recently expanded to address an FAC nom issue. So, your comments that it focuses too much on "office products" is well-taken and easily addressed. I took the "weasel" sentence from a very early version of this page before I "arrived". It was either insufficiently sourced, or the source has been diluted or lost as I made massive changes (hopefully for the better) to this article. I've been wondering if it seemed strange to anyone else, so now that you mention it - I'm happy to strike it.

I have a couple of other reliable sources to add to the mix to replace this and bolster the section. However, Williams and Felici have written in this area for decades and are very reliable sources. Wersheler-Henry's book is also well researched with comprehensive endnotes and Bibliography, so I think it could reasonably comprise a small portion of this section - even if only as support to the other sources and material. I'll address this later today.

Thanks for your comments and I'd urge you put your obvious expertise in this area to good use in the Sentence spacing in the digital age article. --Airborne84 (talk) 00:27, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

Rewritten:

Reduced focus on the "Executive" typewriter innovation.

Kept Wersheler-Henry as a reference. I'm not an expert in this area, so I won't debate if the information in the book is truthful. Yet, it is verifiable and is considered an WP:RS, so it's reasonable to retain it with the accompanying material.

There are unsourced sentences—it was hard to string together only sourced statements and still "tell a story" which was an FAC comment I was trying to address. The first sentence seems unsourced, but is addressed by the endnote at the end of the second sentence. I thought it useful as a transition sentence. The other unsourced sentences do not seem contentious to me. I could be wrong. The very last sentence could be, but it is sourced by the entire following section on "Modern literature." --Airborne84 (talk) 04:06, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that the transition to single spacing came from the computer, not from the typewriter. I have been using a typewriter since I was 5 (mid-1950's), and double spacing after sentences was what everybody did, and I still use them when I can (to no avail typically, as with Wikipedia and Facebook). In our office, we quit issuing our reports (though not always our letters) with single spacing almost as soon as we opened in 1998. No less an expert than Dilbert took up the issue in a cartoon series a few years ago. Shocking Blue (talk) 12:04, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The article covers the computer's impact on single sentence spacing—although, as stated, the movement in professional print media began in the 1940s in the U.S. and U.K. The Dilbert note is an interesting one. If you can find the exact cartoon, it might add some "flavor" to the article—perhaps under the "controvery" section. --Airborne84 (talk) 14:41, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

"The first sentence needs more authoritative references."

The Penguin Books' 1947 guide to typesetters, the Penguin Composition Rules, are a set of general style instructions that were intended to raise the standard of their post-war book work and produce consistent results from suppliers. In the very first section, its author, the typographer Jan Tschichold wrote "All major punctuation marks – full point, colon and semicolon – should be followed by the same spacing as is used throughout the rest of the line." It may be that his reasoning was from an aesthetic point of view, but bear in mind that typesetters may also charge per keystroke. In those days Penguin's paperbacks were typeset afresh, rather than scaled-down reprints of setting from a hardback edition that has become the norm today, so avoiding double-word spacing represented a potential cost saving when you consider the number of Penguin paperbacks that were produced and the economic conditions of the postwar period. 50 years on, when I was designing text pages for Penguin, they still adhered to Tschichold's rules and had updated them as printing technology changed. Ricadus (talk) 00:16, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Reverted edits

I reverted some good faith edits. Unfortunately, they contradicted comments on the peer-review and three FAC nominations. Since the current FAC nomination seems to be garnering support, substantial changes to the article that contradict the comments there will not help the article's FA chances. Please review the FAC history before making substantive edits. [3] Of course, if the article can be improved, that is fine. Changes should be done with the FAC history context in mind, however. --Airborne84 (talk) 04:04, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

note: this article became a FA on July 25, 2010. DGG ( talk ) 03:18, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you to the editors who did the work to reach FA status. I was contributing to typography articles in 2009, but not recently, so I was pleased to see the FA article today.--DThomsen8 (talk) 01:18, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

What does Wikipedia do?

Amusing that the article does not mention Wikipedia's own style on double spacing between sentence. Bellagio99 (talk) 01:40, 4 August 2010 (UTC) (double-spaced before sig.)

Well we go by WP:MOS and you'd probably get a better answer at WT:MOS, rather than here, which is the talk page for the encyclopaedia article on the general subject. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:50, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, no matter the amount of spaces you type, only one will appear, so by default Wikipedia uses single sentence spacing. For example, this sentence begins with one space. This sentence begins with two. — the Man in Question (in question) 02:58, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Self-references are generally avoided. --Cybercobra (talk) 03:41, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

This whole article has single spaced sentences.

Seems like we have some POV on the subject here. Maybe we should alter some of the paragraphs so the sentences are separated by two spaces, and leave others as they are. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sukiari (talk • contribs)

(1) That would be inconsistent within the article and with the rest of Wikipedia (2) It's impossible or extremely cumbersome to do double-spacing in HTML (read the article) (3) "No known style guide published after 1990 prescribes double sentence spacing for final or published work." --Cybercobra (talk) 08:31, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

No known style guide...

I deleted the following line from the article: "No known style guide published after 1990 prescribes double sentence spacing for final or published work." Even if we've decided that the 6th edition of the APA style guide is unclear on this (as it applies to "final or published work"), it's still unsourced. Further, as it's impossible to prove a negative I'm not sure if anyone could ever provide an adequate source. And it would certainly be unacceptable for Wikipedia editors to conduct original research to "prove" this. ElKevbo (talk) 19:05, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

I replaced with a sourced sentence. --Airborne84 (talk) 19:50, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Searching for published style guides to use in citations is hardly "original research". It's exactly what Wikipedia editors should be doing. And if the search proves negative, that's surely just as significant. Mhkay (talk) 20:58, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

The sentence being discussed now reads, "No known style or language guide indicates that double sentence spacing is proper for final or published work today, and many state that it is incorrect.[85]"  Meanwhile, [85] reads, "The most notable exception in the United States is the 6th edition of the Publication Manual, which reversed its position in 2009 to recommend double sentence spacing for draft work. See American Psychological Association 2009. p. 272."  That is not a reference that says there are no such manuals, it is proof of the opposite.  RB 66.217.117.74 (talk) 09:14, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

"As a practical matter, however, there is nothing wrong with using two spaces after concluding punctuation marks..." http://www.mla.org/style/style_faq/style_faq3   RB  66.217.117.153 (talk) 08:44, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

http://www.tameri.com/format/fmtedu.html has a table showing that of APA, MLA, and Chicago, only Chicago specifies one-space only.  Regarding Chicago, they note "The formatting and style guide applies to manuscripts, not the appearance of published works."  RB  66.217.117.153 (talk) 09:02, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that the sentence that I replaced was in a different area of the article. However, the passage you mention is a tricky one here at Wikipedia. The note is not intended to provide a reference for the statement. It just notes a caveat, although only to manuscripts, so it doesn't overturn the statement. That returns us to the question of the statement, "No known style or language guide indicates that double sentence spacing is proper for final or published work today." It is sourced to the degree that the article Sentence spacing in language and style guides supports it. Perhaps because of that, the other editors that have reviewed the article have agreed to let it stand. In my view, it makes the article, and Wikipedia, better because the statement is useful to readers. If you disagree, we can raise the question again with other editors. --Airborne84 (talk) 13:09, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Disregard. After some thought, I changed the statement to one that is sourced, and simply discusses "most style guides". I think, in the long run, that will be better. --Airborne84 (talk) 17:32, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Paragraph Marks

Early text, in books, placed great emphasis on the text block and its color (blackness). These were rectangular (and I still use the Golden Rectangle). Before the text block disintegrated with time, a paragraph mark, one character wide, was placed in it to mark one side of a large unit of punctuation: the paragraph. (Eric Gill's only book uses these to ease reading.) This would seem to contradict the need for two spaces to help mark a smaller unit of punctuation: the sentence. Some books indicated paragraphs by number, moved the initial mark (number) to the left margin. Accordingly, regular paragraph marks appear to have been moved there; but, not longer necessary, were removed, leaving a square block. As line spacing increases, it seems reasonable to enlarge paragraph indentation to form a square.

The above is conjecture; but it suggests it logical that larger units of punctuation be indicated in more noticeable ways. The early use of one-space paragraph marks gives logical support to using one space only after a period, or full stop. Geologist (talk) 21:12, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Book Typesetting Style Manuals on French and Regular Spacing

Kingsport Press Style Manual for Floormen undated but very pre-1969 (the year I was hired on and received my copy) on Sentence Spacing:

SENTENCE SPACING

French Spacing

When the instructions specify French sentence spacing, use the same space between sentences that is used between words in the line.

Regular Spacing

When the instructions specify regular spacing, use the same space between sentences that is used between words plus a nut space.

Kingsport Press From the Notebooks of H.J.H & D.H.A. on Composition (Linotype)

SENTENCE SPACING

French

In French sentence spacing a spaceband only is used at the end of a sentence. In French spacing use only a spaceband after a colon, regardless of whether the colon is followed by a cap, or by a lower case letter, or by a figure.

Regular

In regular sentence spacing a spaceband and a nut quad are used at the end of a sentence. In regular spacing use a spaceband and a thin space if a colon is followed by a cap. In regular spacing use a spaceband only if a colon is followed by a lower case letter or by a figure. ....

Spaceband is a variable width word space in Linotype. The vast majority of production jobs I saw and worked on at Kingsport Press, hundreds of titles between 1969 and 2003, were French spacing, whether Linotype, VideoComp, Linotron or PostScript. Naaman Brown (talk) 21:23, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for posting this information! I can get hold of the references. They will provide some more support for the French-spacing topic which is a bit confusing for most people. I'll add the material when the refernces come in. --Airborne84 (talk) 02:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Double sentence spacing

Please leave the lede image in place. The article went through a peer review and three FAC reviews over a 3-month period. The central tenet of the article is not in question. Double sentence spacing and double spacing are two different things. Two carriage returns after a line is double spacing. Strking the keyboard twice after terminal punctuation is an example of double sentence spacing. --Airborne84 (talk) 22:44, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Some comments

The article says, "Another consideration is that as terminal punctuation marks the end of a sentence, and additional spacing is itself punctuation,[9] additional spacing is redundant." This is not true; periods, which are terminal punctuation, also mark abbreviations, initials, etc. I hope that this mistake can be corrected, and that a source can be found for the best reason for extra sentence space (imho): to distinguish sentence-ending periods from others. I find the current practice confusing only when the word after a non-sentence-ending period is capitalized, which is an unusual situation. It would be interesting to know whether the studies on readability used texts that included this situation.

On another point, I agree that the subject of most interest to general readers is typing on computers: one space or two? But the article also covers typography, and there the alternative to one word space is not two word spaces but something less, as in TeX and the old style guide reproduced as an illustration. It would be great if the article could address this and if there are studies on the readability of one space versus 1.333 spaces and the like. Also, the quotations under "Typography" deprecating "two spaces" are knocking down a straw man.

Finally, the section on rivers seems poorly integrated. If extra space after sentences creates rivers, which make text harder to read, then why is there no significant difference in readability? Does extra space have compensating advantages? And does the use of 1.333 spaces create less severe rivers than two spaces? —JerryFriedman (Talk) 02:38, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Some good comments and questions:

• 1. I've noted your point about periods occurring in the center of a sentence in many blogs. I didn't include it in the controversy section because I only used reliable references and sources. Experts don't discuss that point since it's like many others in English. Like most sentences that could be confusing, an expert will simply tell you to reword it, such as spelling out the acronym or changing the order of the sentence. The remaining instances of unweildy sentences should be infrequent enough (as you noted) that it's not worth changing the entire English language for them. A good writer can probably eliminate any use of this if it's confusing. I will note that the "Controversy" section could be expanded into its own article that includes popular opinion (plenty of opinions out there). Finally, it's irrelevant if that statement you mentioned wasn't "true". Wikipedia represents verifiability, not truth. We simply present the information given by reliable sources. That statement came from an experienced typographer, and it's verifiable.
  • I disagree strongly about the relevance of whether a statement in Wikipedia is true, but the point is academic here. Plenty of sources say that periods occur in the middle of sentences. For instance, "When an abbreviation containing a period occurs within a sentence, the period remains." Geraldine Woods, Webster's New World Punctuation, Simplified and Applied
  • Likewise plenty of sources say the purpose of typography is to make written text clear. In a quick look, I didn't find a source that says that if something that occurs in writing is unclear with a given typographic convention, changing the writing is better than changing the convention.

According to one of Wikipedia's core policies, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."

As I said, this point is academic, because there are reliable sources that say terminal punctuation can occur in the middle of a sentence. I gave one. Therefore including just a quotation that says it can't is POV. (And in my opinion, giving only one point of view is especially bad when that point of view is false.) I don't know how you want to handle this, since I don't know what Bringhurst says, but I don't think it's good to leave the sentence as it is. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 17:42, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

I think it's OK as it is. I re-read your original post. The issue is not with Bringhurst, it's with the way I worded the sentence. The article only states that periods cannot exist in the middle of sentences if you consider "terminal punctuation" in a broader sense in that it could also end an abbreviation mid-sentence. I wrote the Wikipedia article on terminal punctuation. Of all the references I used, I only saw one that used terminal punctuation in that sense. So, I could have been very precise in the sentence you mentioned and said, "Another consideration is that as periods, question marks and exclamation marks denote the end of sentences, and additional spacing is itself punctuation,[9] additional spacing is redundant." However, I originally wrote the entire article in this very precise way. When it went through the peer review and three FAC nominations, I was told to get rid of all the verbiosity. It took a long time and it turns out that, for a popular audience, less precision=better prose=Featured Article on Wikiepda. Again, I think that the sentence as worded might only be misinterpreted by a very few people that are extremely well-informed, such as yourself. However, we can let other editors weigh in on this if you think this sentence should return to wordier precision. --Airborne84 (talk) 18:18, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

After a bit more thought, I also don't think that the sentence, as written, implies that mid-sentence "end" punctuation can't be used, in the same sense that it doesn't exclude periods/full stops used in numbers, for example. A statement that terminal punctuation marks the end of a sentence means just that—and needn't imply that those punctuation marks cannot do anything else. Again, other editors can weigh in though. --Airborne84 (talk) 04:22, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry what I wrote was so hard to understand. I think the present version does imply that those punctuation marks cannot do anything else, because extra space isn't redundant if it distinguishes end-of-sentence periods from those occurring in sentences. Saying "periods, question marks, and exclamation marks" would have exactly the same problem. It's too bad no RS discussed that argument for extra space even to refute it.

It's kind of you to say I'm extremely well-informed, but you said a number of blog posts have brought up the argument about distinguishing the different uses of periods. I think people who take that argument seriously are likely to object just as I do. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 04:01, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

If a dissenting opinion could be found by a reliable source, it would certainly merit inclusion. David Jury's quote indirectly discussed this with this statement: "Some argue that the 'additional' space after a comma and full point serves as a 'pause signal' for the reader. But this is unnecessary (and visually disruptive) since the pause signal is provided by the punctuation mark itself." This doesn't directly address your point about mid-sentence punctuation, I understand, but it provides some more context. It also assumes that writers will ensure punctuation is not ambiguous. I don't remember anything else from a reliable source directly about the redundancy of extra spaces, but I'll look through my notes in the next few days. I had a lot of material that I didn't include in the article simply because it all said basically the same thing—typographers are in agreement about this topic, they just say it in different ways. There are works on typography that I didn't include, so it would be possible to canvas some of them to try to find more information--especially if you try some published in other languages. You probably won't find much there though, because this topic isn't discussed much outside of typographic works in English. Sentence spacing just wasn't an issue in most languages outside of English (my original research around Europe, South America, and Francophone Africa). --Airborne84 (talk) 10:26, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

In the Elements of Typographic Style (2004), Bringhurst stated that "larger spaces (e.g., en spaces) are themselves punctuation, but that the rule [of single spacing] is sometimes altered when "sentences begin with lowercase letters. In the absence of a capital, a full en space (M/2) between sentences may be welcome." It seems that experts (at least Bringhurst anyway) think that terminal punctuation, combined with a single space followed by a capital letter is sufficient to identify the end of a sentence. Of course, it's possible to replicate this in the middle of a sentence, for some abbreviations followed by or combined with a proper noun (notably in the German language). However, this would be infrequent enough (and better reworded) so as to not provoke a major cry for help from readers, IMO. I hope that helps. --Airborne84 (talk) 11:08, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

• 2. I don't think the direct studies used periods in the middle of the sentence. I could look through them again, but, as I remember, they were generally well-written prose.
  • All kinds of things occur in generally well-written prose. For instance, Vladimir Nabokov's prose has been praised to the skies, and in Pale Fire the main narrator likes to refer to people in the form "Jane P.", for example.

True. But it's possible to put an abbreviation in the middle of the sentence without introducing ambiguity or lack of clarity. If a period mid-sentence did either of those two things, it typically wouldn't be well-written prose—with few exceptions (perhaps poetry or somthing similar). --Airborne84 (talk) 00:57, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

• 3. The article does discuss the "traditional spacing" that Tex replicates with its /frenchspacing function. However, it's not "double spacing" in it's most literal sense (see the FAQ on the talk page). It's a single em space.
  • I think this is backwards. What \frenchspacing gives you is the spacing recommended by the sources in the article, where the space after a period is a word space in all situations.

My mistake, I meant to type "replicates when not using the \frenchspacing function".

• 4. As far as the "Typography" section, I suspected that some people wouldn't like the information there. However, typographers are pretty unanimous about this subject. Some use neutral terms to discuss why double sentence spacing shouldn't be used and some uses much stronger verbiage. Our job as editors is simply to report it.
  • My question here is the same as David A. Spitzley's below, I think. What are they unanimous about? That the space after a period should be the same regardless of whether it ends a sentence, or that it can be more at the end of a sentence but not twice the word space? Are they using "double sentence spacing" as a hyperbole for "extra sentence spacing"?

They are pretty unanimous that spacing after a sentence should be equal to a normal word space (in that particular font). There are a few caveats, but none that aren't discussed in the article.

Then that's what the article should say. As it is, the lead points out that there are three choices: a single space, an enlarged single space, and a double space. Quotations that condemn double spaces leave open the possibility of a single enlarged space, so I think they're confusing if used to indicate a unanimous preference for a single space. It would be better to take them out and just have the quotations that say clearly what they mean. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 04:01, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I'll take a look at this in the next week. In the article as a whole, it's appropriate to include sources that talk about enlarged single spacing as well as double spacing. However, if there are sentences or sections that mix them together in a way that is confusing, that is a problem. Which quote(s) are you specifically talking about? I'll also sort through in the next week to see if more clarity is needed. --Airborne84 (talk) 10:53, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

• 5. It would be nice if there were more studies, I fully agree. As far as the effect on rivers on readability, I don't know if holes or rivers have an effect on readability or not. The direct studies were rather limited and more studies are needed for a good answer. It could turn out that extra space between sentences actually improves readability. Again, I tried not to interpret the studies. I just presented the ones that were verifiable and relevant to this topic.
  • I'm questioning the relevance of the "Related studies" section. Studies show that sentence spacing doesn't significantly affect readability; that's all that needs to be said on readability. If extra sentence space interfered with readability, then we might need an explanation in terms of modern standards or of rivers, but as it is, there's nothing to explain. There might still be a place for typographers' esthetic objection to extra sentence space, especially if it's clear that this is the producers' taste, not the users'.

To be a featured article, it must be comprehensive. I found two sources that thought other studies could be relevant to this convention (cited in the article). In that light, they can be included. For my part, I was glad to find those sources to allow their inclusion. If I couldn't find sources that stated that, I probably would have invoked Wikipedia:Ignore all rules and included them anyway. I've visited over 100 websites with people arguing back and forth about this topic. Supporters on both sides argue for the "readability" or "legibility" of their preference. I have seen exactly zero non-experts who have provided a single study to back up their opinion. I found very few experts who referred to studies. Given that the few direct studies are limited in scope (only on-screen type) and the researchers themselves stated that more studies were needed, simply providing a single short paragraph on the inconclusive direct studies leaves the reader wanting. Since there is more to say on the subject, I thought that readers would want to see it.

But the article still leaves me wanting just as much. And worse yet, I have to think about the "related studies" section to realize that it's not what I want, which is evidence that bears on whether extra sentence spacing is a good idea. Indeed, I'm not sure why you wanted it in the article, except the statements from experts that extra sentence spacing causes rivers, which they don't like. I understand that the studies you'd have liked don't exist, but the present solution doesn't work for me.

Thanks for your patience in discussing this. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 04:13, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

It was also rather laborious putting all the studies together. That's irrelevant to anyone but me, of course. The utility here is that this is the only comprehensive collection of studies on this topic that exists...anywhere. In that sense, it helps make Wikipedia better. Thanks again and best regards, --Airborne84 (talk) 23:00, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your interest. --Airborne84 (talk) 12:08, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

• • Thanks for your extensive research and detailed answers. —JerryFriedman (Talk) 15:12, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

This is a sentence from the article: "The debate continues, notably on the World Wide Web—as many people use search engines to try to find what is correct." Why is that here? I don't know of any other article that mentions its subject's popularity in Web searches. Kevin S. (talk) 18:20, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

According to WP:LEDE, the lede must summarize the article. I thought that was a reasonable way to do so IRT the "Controversy" section, which covers the debate regarding this topic. --Airborne84 (talk) 23:59, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Separation of Concepts

After reading this article, I was struck that is seems there are two different ideas being blended together without being explicitly distinguished. One is that one shouldn't hit the spacebar twice between sentences when typing, while the second is that with current technology extra space between sentences can be achieved with a single space correctly kerned (i.e. 3-em spaces). It seems to me that it would be useful to specifically clarify whether the purpose of moving away from double spacing is "style guides say you should achieve extra white space between sentences by adjusting kerning on a single character" or "style guides say you shouldn't have extra white space between sentences". It seems to me that both messages are coming through, and they don't mean the same thing. David A Spitzley (talk) 15:27, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to address that. I don't know that there are any "messages" that should be coming through. It's a collection of encyclopedic references—although to be a Featured Article, it has to have well-written prose, so it can't jump randomly around, so to speak.

Many style guides do say what is in your latter phrase in quotes. That's more developed in the sister article, Sentence spacing in language and style guides, which is just summarized here.

This article was originally much longer. The three FAC nominations and the peer review brought it down to the current size. Some concepts had to be separated back out due to too much summary, but it seemed like the editors at FAC thought it was sufficent as you see it now (with a few adjustments in the last few days). That's not to say the article is perfect. If you see a specific way that the article could be clearer, please discuss it here. Of course, you can certainly go ahead and make edits. However, I have a rather substantial set of notes and references on this topic, so if we discuss a change here, I will be in a good position to source it to the standard required of an FA. Thanks for your interest. --Airborne84 (talk) 00:50, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Typewriter conventions

I reverted the deletion of the sentence noting "typewriter conventions". Double sentence spacing is one of numerous examples of typewriter conventions that were based on the mechanical limitations of the typewriter. In that sense, placing sentence spacing within the framework of similar "typewriter conventions" is relevant. There are plenty of examples of this in many Wikipedia articles. It shouldn't be overdone, but I think that one sentence is reasonable. If other editors feel differently, feel free to chime in. --Airborne84 (talk) 02:38, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia Turkey

Hello! I have been translating into Turkish for Wikipedia-Turkey. I have changed the content of this article's the main picture. I am sorry. I was thinking The main picture was not uploaded on Wikipedia-Turkey. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mustafa Bakacak (talk • contribs) 22:11, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

If I'm reading this right, you had to change the lead photo on Wikipedia Turkey's "Sentence spacing" article? You'll have to be the judge of any changes, because most of us probably don't read Turkish. Thanks! --Airborne84 (talk) 22:09, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Software autocorrection

There are at least some pieces of typesetting software that provide some level of support for automatic correction of inter-sentence spacing; TeX and HTML renderers come to mind. When this sort of autocorrection happens, it makes no difference as to whether there are one or two space characters encoded. (I suppose some software might actually use double-spacing to indicate inter-sentence spacing and single-spacing to indicate intra-sentence spacing, though I know of none.)

The article is somewhat unclear on whether the proscription is on how many times one must press the spacebar, or the code (ASCII, UTF-8, or other) used to represent the space or the number of those codes, or the visual presentation of inter-sentence spacing. Assuming that it's the latter, since the article does mention that double-spacing should or can be used when using monospaced fonts, shouldn't there be more indication that some software performs correction for spacing and some does not? The only mention I saw was in reference to professional typesetting software, and, to me at least, that implies multi-thousand dollar software, not TeX and web browsers.

All that said, I don't really know how to fix it without "original research". Seems like a survey of commonly-used typesetting software would be pertinent, but I can't find any such thing. — wfaulk (talk) 15:21, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. You bring up some interesting points. The key thing would be to find some reliable sources that cover this area. I'm sure there are some out there. However, I'd suggest that Sentence spacing in the digital age is a better place to cover this in detail. The section here is only a summary of that article. --Airborne84 (talk) 23:07, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

False dichotomy

I find this a confused and misleading article. The first paragraph rightly recognises that

various sentence spacing conventions have been used […]. These include a normal word space (as between the words in a sentence), a single enlarged space, and two full spaces.

But almost immediately, the rest of the article switches to a studied ignorance of the middle option. The rest of the article speaks as if the choice is only between one space or two, and makes spurious conclusions: quotes to the effect that double-spacing is obsolete are repeatedly used to claim that single-spacing is standard! What happened to inter-sentence spacing that's about, say, 1.1 to 1.25 times the inter-word spacing, as is the default in TeX? You can still, in 2010, find a slightly wide space in many research journals (for instance), and much more frequently as you go back, contrary to the article's claim that "From around 1950, single sentence spacing became standard in books, magazines and newspapers" (which claim, BTW, is not supported by the quote given as reference). I find the presentation of this false dichotomy rather unhelpful (though I must admit the baffling fact that it's present in most of the sources used, which makes me doubt their thoroughness). How about fixing the article so that it doesn't sound as if "one" and "two" are the only options? Shreevatsa (talk) 20:21, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I think I can address some:

• There are no conclusions presented in the article. It’s simply a collection of encyclopedic references. Some (actually many) of the sources state that double sentence spacing is obsolete and others state that single spacing is the current convention.
• You are right that TeX is an example of the “enlarged single space” technique. That was in early versions of this article. However, the list of digital examples was judged too much for a Featured Article when this article was a FAC (three times). The details on TeX and other examples are in the main article now (Sentence spacing in the digital age), and the “digital age” section here is a summary. The main article is where people can find the details on the third option that you mention.

The Williams quote is only one of the sources used to support the statement you mentioned. If you check the other sources, you will be satisfied, I am certain.

I understand your point that the article focuses on single vs. double spacing, (although I think that the history section covers the "third option" fairly well). The history section, again, was condensed to a summary section with a link to a larger main article History of sentence spacing.

It’s true that a significant portion of the article is devoted to the single vs. double sentence spacing techniques. There are two main reasons for this, and you already alluded to the latter:

• This is what modern readers are interested in.
• This is what the preponderance of the sources discuss—apart from some of the historical references and historical sections in some of the books. If modern style guides, for example, discussed em spaced sentences that technique would figure more prominently.

I'm sorry you found the article confusing. I wrote it to be informative. I hope my comments help. Best, --Airborne84 (talk) 03:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Too many issues to list

(1) "Foolish" is not a constructive word.  (2) Regarding the sentence, "It is also acceptable even for monospaced fonts to be single spaced today.[83]", this is a broad generalization, but examining the reference only reveals one such case.  (3) The author at webword.com seems to think that proportional fonts are relevant to the issue of "One Versus Two Spaces After a Period," but two proportional spaces are still more than one proportional space.  There are five references to this one questionable source in the article.  (4) Also the article itself pointlessly opens up the proportional font topic, saying, "With the introduction of proportional fonts in computers, double sentence spacing became obsolete."  It is not even necessary to check the references because the article itself documents the ongoing attention given this topic.  (5) Regarding the comment "...proportional fonts now assign...", fonts are graphics and do not assign variable spacing. RB  66.217.117.74 (talk) 10:31, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

re: "What is Typography?" by David Jury, Rotovision: 2009

The first point is that What is Typography is not an academic work, it contains speculation and opinion.  The bias is that the author is employed in the typography industry.  The author finds typewriter typesetting vulgar.  For example, the author finds (p. 58) that the monospaced font of a typewriter "<gives> a line of text a loose and particularly uneven appearance. The uneven spaces within and between characters is exactly what well-designed and well-set type avoids."  Because of the typewriter typesetting convention of putting two spaces at the end of a sentence, "we have...the aberration of texts shot through with holes" (p. 58).

So we are already starting with a reference that has a POV, but the specific reason for this posting is that the article does not correctly use the reference.

Here is what the article says,

This caused a widespread change in practice. From the late 19th century, printers were told to ignore their typesetting manuals in favor of typewriter spacing;

Here is what the reference on p. 58 says, "Interestingly, in all the technical information related to typerwriters, the printer was ordered to use the spacing conventions of the typewriter manual rather than his own typesetting manual."

This seems not to have to do with a general change in the industry but the preferences of customers with experience with typewriter typesetting.

The article continues,

...in the 1890s, Monotype and Linotype operators used double sentence spacing."

What the reference on p. 58 says is, "When phototypesetting was developed, the new technology remained, for the most part, within the print industry and so a large number of Monotype and Linotype keyboard operatives simply transferred their skills and typographic knowledge to the new technology."  Clearly, phototypesetting is not dated to the 1890s.  What the author actually says is, "The conventions of the typing manual were of limited interest to typographers until digital technology provided everyone with desktop publishing (DTP) software" (p. 54).

The statements you mentioned are paraphrased, but I'm not sure what the issue is with the first one. It captures Jury's message. Any speculation regarding customer's preferences is prohibited under WP:OR—I simply reported what the sources stated. I think you are referring to a different passage for the second note above.

I'm not sure what the issue with David Jury is. He is a noted typographer and author. Could you please explain how his published work is not relevant or allowed on Wikipedia according to such policies such as WP:V and WP:RS? Thanks for your interest. --Airborne84 (talk) 19:47, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Jury says that double or triple spaces at the end of sentences are "extreme procedures", which is hyperbole.  Since you know the policy, what policy applies?  RB  66.217.117.62 (talk) 04:47, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:V applies. Wikipedia represents verifiability, not truth. As editors, we are not allowed to interpret what the sources say. We simply report what reliable sources say. My suggestion would be to review Wikipedia's policy on Verifiability, Original Research, and Neutral Point of View. The policy on Reliable Sources may also be relevant. I hope that helps. --Airborne84 (talk) 13:21, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

"This caused a widespread change in practice."

I thought this problem would be more obvious, but since not, I've opened a new section.

Here is what the article says,

This caused a widespread change in practice. From the late 19th century, printers were told to ignore their typesetting manuals in favor of typewriter spacing;

Here is what the reference on p. 58 says, "Interestingly, in all the technical information related to typewriters, the printer was ordered to use the spacing conventions of the typewriter manual rather than his own typesetting manual."

We are talking in the context of "technical information related to typewriters."  Who would create technical information related to typewriters?  That would be typewriter manufacturers.  Would the technical information be printed?  It doesn't matter, but it seems likely, and it seems likely that these would be manuals that used the spacing convention of the typewriter rather than the typesetting manual.

We know from p. 54 that, "The conventions of the typing manual were of limited interest to typographers..."  So the typographers had little interest in "the technical information related to typewriters."  Thus there is no reference here for a "widespread" change.  We can infer that the typographers ignored their typesetting manuals on occasion, for a few customers, but this reference does not say that.  RB  66.217.117.62 (talk) 06:05, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

There is no reference for the passage, "This caused a widespread change in practice." It's a transition sentence, and one that didn't seem contentious to me, although it is supported by the three topics contained in the following sentence—especially that it was "widely taught in typing class." When considering the three changes as a whole, it seems apparent that there was a widespread change in practice.

To be honest, I tried to source every single sentence and idea in the article—for obvious reasons. Unfortunately, in some areas, the prose became stilted without effective transitions. So, I chose what I thought were non-contentious transition sentences. This is one of them. --Airborne84 (talk) 03:58, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation about transition sentences.  I can see that the title of my section here could be misleading, especially since you see a transition to not just one but three points.  I think you are still missing an obvious error in the first transition point.  An industry isn't going to ignore their manuals, they will re-write them based on a new standard/convention.  Jury, whose anti-typewriter hyperbole reflects the viewpoint of the typography industry, states on p. 54 that, "The conventions of the typing manual were of limited interest to typographers..."  The article history of sentence spacing reasonably claims that there is more influence from typewriter conventions than Jury admits, but there is still here no basis to say that this industry ignored their own manuals.  I wonder if you are trying to say that during the 1930s the common practice in American typography was that before justification, sentence spacing was twice the width of word spacing; which also happened to be the typewriter standard.  And that this was a transition from the late 1890s in which sentence spacing was triple the width of word spacing.  I just know that what is in the article now is not supported by references.  RB  66.217.118.124 (talk) 19:23, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I think that the passage is a reasonable paraphrase from Jury's statement. As editors, we can't interpret what Jury might have meant, we can only report what he said. But perhaps there is a better way to phrase it. Do you have a suggestion? --Airborne84 (talk) 22:01, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

The bigger picture here is that what to me is an "obvious" error is not something about which I can achieve consensus with you.
RB  66.217.118.166 (talk) 23:56, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

"...in the 1890s, Monotype and Linotype operators used double sentence spacing."

The article states,

"...in the 1890s, Monotype and Linotype operators used double sentence spacing.[11]"

[11] ^ a b Jury 2009. p. 58.

What the reference on p. 58 says is, "When phototypesetting was developed, the new technology remained, for the most part, within the print industry and so a large number of Monotype and Linotype keyboard operatives simply transferred their skills and typographic knowledge to the new technology."

(1) Phototypesetting is not dated to the 1890s.

(2) There is no reference that says that operators used "double sentence spacing."  RB  66.217.117.62 (talk) 06:38, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

A fair point. I believe this has been modified a few times from when I first added the material and citation. I'll look at early versions to see if the text drifted from the original material. It should be an easy fix, even if it's just deleting this passage. That may not be needed though. Thanks. --Airborne84 (talk) 03:44, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

I made the adjustment. I believe that Jury's work supports the statement regarding Monotype and Linotype operators, but the 1890 date was, indeed, erroneous. Thus, I removed it. Thanks. --Airborne84 (talk) 01:20, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

"Computers offered additional sentence spacing tools"

The article says,

By the 1960s... Computers offered additional sentence spacing tools for the average writer,[35]

[35]^ Jury 2009. p. 56.

Page 56 is two pictures, one circa 1900-1916, and the other is from 1930, so the reference is erroneous.  RB  66.217.117.62 (talk) 06:33, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. The article went through three rigorous editorial reviews over about three months to become a Featured Article, so I think that most editors were comfortable that the references support the material. However, I'll review Jury's reference this week to see if I can help explain the linkage—or at least the rationale for the use of the reference to support the material.

As I'm sure your efforts here are only intended to improve this article, might I suggest that (if you're not comfortable with this reference) you look for additional references to support the article? The article can certainly be improved—and you can help. Thanks for your interest. --Airborne84 (talk) 13:10, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

At this point I can't comment about Featured Article reviews.  As far as the sentence, I don't know what was intended—data entry during the 1960s was done with the keypunch.  Page 56 is on the web, so it is not hard to verify that the reference is erroneous.  RB  66.217.118.174 (talk) 23:17, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I guess I'm not sure what the issue is here. You've noted two items that Jury's work identifies:

1. "By the 1960s..." It doesn't matter whether this is "true" or "false". It only has to be from a reliable, verifiable source.

2. "Computers offered additional sentence spacing tools for the average writer." This is a paraphrase of the paragraph that starts with "Given the opportunity to produce printed documents using highly sophisticated DTP software," which goes on to mention the use of extra spacing after a sentence. However, I don't think that a source is even needed for this sentence. Wikipedia only requires material that is "likely to be challenged" to be sourced. I can't imagine that the sentence, as stated, is contentious. The tools are described in detail in Sentence spacing in the digital age. If the issue is that you think the reference should be removed because it doesn't support the sentence, we simply disagree. However, we can ask other editors to weigh in if you feel strongly about it. --Airborne84 (talk) 03:22, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Airborne84,

Is that quote on p. 57?

Do you agree that the reference is not on p. 56 and that the current reference is erroneous?

Regarding your other points, I'll review them and the reference.  Thanks for the response.  RB  66.217.117.153 (talk) 05:11, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, and fixed. Good catch. Thanks. --Airborne84 (talk) 13:14, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

What is "single sentence spacing"?

This article uses two fundamentally different meanings for "single sentence spacing".  One meaning is based on the appearance of text (SSA), and the other is based on typesetting technique (SSTT).

Example (1) is the caption in the figure in the "Traditional Typesetting" section, "Single sentence spaced typeset text with an em-space between sentences (1909)".  In the figure, sentence spacing is wider than word spacing.  Calling this "single sentence spacing" is SSTT.

Example (2) is in the lede, "From around 1950, single sentence spacing became standard in books, magazines and newspapers."  The editor means that sentence spacing equals word spacing.  This is SSA.  RB  66.217.118.135 (talk) 00:01, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

You are correct. If the photo caption said only "Single sentence spaced typeset text", this would be a problem that merited a change. However, the caption explains what is meant with the caveat, "Single sentence spaced typeset text with an em-space between sentences". I think the average reader will understand. Of course, I won't object to clarifying the caption if other editors think it's a problem. --Airborne84 (talk) 01:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I think this is a bigger problem.  The fact that the example I gave was self-defining, made it a good example to understand the ambiguity, but doesn't mean that the ambiguity is isolated to that example.

It seems that you are saying that SSA is the "correct" meaning.  You wrote above, here in the talk section, "Strking the keyboard twice after terminal punctuation is an example of double sentence spacing."  That is SSTT.

Likewise, there is the edit that we discussed in History_of_Sentence_Spacing, where the author wrote, regarding style from 1870 to 1901, "Double sentence-spacing was not typically used in normal text."  There is another example of SSTT.  When I documented on the talk page that this was an "obvious error", I was seeing SSA.

I could give more examples, but the point for now is to document the existence of the ambiguity.

OK. Could you explain what SSTT and the other terms stand for? I am not familiar with them. Also, does endnote 25 address what you are saying? Thanks. --Airborne84 (talk) 13:48, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, my introduction of the acronyms above was not up to APA guidelines and not clear.  The acronyms are Sentence Spacing Appearance (SSA), and Sentence Spacing Typesetting Technique (SSTT).  I hope that makes it more clear.

Regarding endnote 25, the short answer is no--that is a topic for another section.  RB  66.217.117.118 (talk) 20:12, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I see. One of the FAQs at the top of the talk page addresses this, at least in part. However, I think you are saying that it should be addressed in the article. I have a couple thoughts on this:

1. We have to be careful in trying to capture every possible nuance of the terms and ideas in the article. If you look at early versions of this article (Jan-Mar 2010), you will see much more detailed prose—showing that I tried to do exactly that. It didn't come close to making it past the first Featured Article Candidate (FAC) try. (Since you are interested in improving this article, I recommend you review the three FAC pages for this article.) Anyway, one of the biggest issues with the first go-round was wordiness. I tried to be too detailed and accurate. Apparently, at Wikipedia, trying to capture every possible nuance makes for an article that is difficult for the average reader to peruse. We've wrestled with this general issue some since the article reached FA status. Some editors, such as you, that are extremely well-read and well-informed, recommend that the nuances are captured. I don't mind doing so, but not at the cost of making it harder for the average reader to understand—losing FA status in the process. You and I may together disagree with the idea that adding detail and nuances should affect the article's readability. However, I finally had to accept it for the article to become an FA at Wikiepdia.

2. Having said that, I make no claim that the article is "finished" or perfect. If you can make a recommendation—in the context of the FAC comments—that will reduce ambiguity and still be easy for the average Wikipedia reader, I will be more than happy to support it.

Which APA work uses the SSA and SSTT terms? I haven't seen them, and would be very interested in looking them up. It's possible that their use could be included in this article or its sister articles—at least in the context of how one reliable source defines the subject. --Airborne84 (talk) 22:46, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

My misuse of an APA Guideline is a bit off topic, but since you ask, I found a reference.  This note is from page 8 of http://www.eiu.edu/edadmin/apa.pdf

Using an Abbreviation or Acronym

52. If you want to use an abbreviation like ADD for attention deficit disorder, the abbreviation must be defined first before you can use it. To do this, first spell out what the abbreviation means followed by the abbreviation in parentheses (APA, 2001, p. 104).
Example: The student with attention deficit disorder (ADD) can be seen to. . .
Then you MUST use the abbreviation ADD with no parentheses for the rest of your paper.

RB  66.217.118.146 (talk) 03:57, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I thought this discussion was done when I said, "I could give more examples, but the point for now is to document the existence of the ambiguity."  RB  66.217.118.146 (talk) 04:07, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

webword.com does not satisfy WP:SPS, WP:SOURCES, and WP:RS

WP:SPS is not satisfied: webword.com is self-published. ref: www.WebWord.com/whatiswebword.html

WP:SOURCES is not satisfied: "no editorial oversight" "rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions".  Here is an example of content from www.webword.com/reports/period.html:

In short, the "rivers" of whitespace, caused by using two spaces, invariably annoy graphic designers and typographers. Well, at least the ones that contacted me.

WP:RS is not satisfied.  www.webword.com/reports/period.html says,

"So, I humbly admit that this is more of a fact-finding report than a web usability rant."

RB  66.217.118.135 (talk) 04:33, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

I think this reference could reasonably remain under Wikipedia's policies. I removed a few web references from this article as I was transforming it because they had various issues. I left this one and a very few others. I understand the points you are making, but they are arguable in this case. We could open this back to discussion with other editors regarding Wikipedia's policies, but I think that's not needed. The sources were closely scrutinized during the Featured Article reviews over three months, and other editors allowed it. Also, it is useful for readers here because it lists a number of sources that are relevant to sentence spacing. Finally, there is no contentious material in the article that relies solely on this reference.

The key thing that I try to analyze in arguable cases is: does it make the article, and Wikipedia, better? I think that this one does--Airborne84 (talk) 14:18, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Analysis of Five References in the Article

A review was done of the five webword references being used in the article.  References 47, 52, 85, and 106 were found to be unreliable.  Reference 101 was found to be outside the scope of Wikipedia.

Reference 47 is used to support:

Soon after the turn of the century, the majority of style guides indicated that only one word space was proper between sentences.

A reader would infer that a study had been done to enumerate the style guides in existence, and that each style guide had been analyzed.

Nearly identical sentences are being supported by references 52 and 85.

References 47, 52, and 85 come from:

Many people told me about the various rules and style guides they follow...Apparently, the vast majority of these guides tell writers to use a single space.

So where the article mentions "the majority of style guides", what is referenced is the style guides of the "many people" who contacted John Rhodes in 1999.  We don't know how many style guides, we don't know how many people volunteered, we don't know how many of these people were referring to the same style guide.  Since John Rhodes states that some of his content could be "rant", "many people" could be a set as small as three or five.

Reference 101 documents the existence of two abstracts.  One is from 1951 titled, "Improving the readability of typewritten manuscripts".  The other abstract is dated 1977 and has to do with, "PSG-CSG complements to developing automaticity".  From my reading, Wikipedia is not a reference library of links to abstracts.

Reference 106 is one man's opinion incorrectly attributed to "The Design and Publishing Center".  It is someone who happened to be employed in 1999 by "The Design and Publishing Center", but whose name is unknown.

RB  66.217.117.118 (talk) 02:11, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

At this point, we simply disagree about the reference. Your recourse at this point is to open the discussion to other editors. You may be able to achieve a consensus that the reference should be deleted. It would be a shame, in my opinion, since it contains the only collection of sources on this subject, which would not be available for readers of this article anymore. However, if you feel that the removal of the reference improves the article, and Wikipedia, then you should continue with your quest. A possible alternative is for you to attempt to improve this article by looking for additional references. --Airborne84 (talk) 02:33, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

This discussion is as to whether or not webword.com is a reliable source for the five references.  There is discussion about retaining webword.com as an external reference in the section below. 

Airborne84's position right now seems to be that webword.com is not a reliable source, but that the five references can "reasonably remain" under WP:NORULES.  On 17 May 2010, Airborne84 wrote during an FA review, "For this subject, the standard of reliability will be held to a higher level than normally seen on Wikipedia."  WP:V has the standard:

This policy is strictly applied to all material in the mainspace—articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions—without exception...

RB  66.217.117.162 (talk) 09:06, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd say right now that the case is well made that webword.com does not meet WP:V.  I also think that unreliable sources lower the reputation of Wikipedia.  As for the five references, four were duplicates, and the fifth had to do with two obscure abstracts that aren't worth keeping; so we might be able to agree that there is no need to consider violating the "no exceptions" rule.  Also, see my proposal in the next section to take care of the External Link.

Since this article has so many problems, I think it needs to have it's rating lowered.
RB  66.217.117.162 (talk) 09:16, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, if you look at what I stated above, I believe that Wikipedia's policies allow this source. WP:NORULES simply makes the question easier. You've made your case, so other editors can weigh in if they want. --Airborne84 (talk) 12:00, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Please be assured that I have read what you said above, and several times.  I realize that you do not want to engage in debate, yet in doing so, I'm left with no clue as to how any WP policy other than WP:NORULES could apply.  I have searched, and not found any previous discussion of webword.com.
Thanks for the response,
RB  66.217.117.202 (talk) 23:32, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

The passages you mention in WP:V do not use language that excludes the possibility of using Wedbword. In the sections you mention, caveats such as, "generally", "usually", and "caution must be exercised when using" do not create a "cannot use" framework. Thus, the question is open to argument on both sides. So, because the author relies almost entirely on expert advice and opinions for the content of the reference (as opposed to solely presenting his own opinion), I believe it is acceptable. Because the reference provides probably the single most comprehensive list of sources on this topic, I feel it is an important resource for this article. For these reasons, I believe that WP:NORULES is also very relevant to your objections. IMO, WP:NORULES—which is a Wikipedia policy, not an essay written by an editor—was written for this type of situation: to prevent an overly strict interpretation of bureaucratic rules from hampering the improvement of articles, and Wikipedia.

You are certainly welcome to respond to my reasons; however, the article was judged to be an FA by a consensus of experienced Wikipedia editors—not by me. Thus, it will require a consensus of editors to determine that this source should be removed from this article, in whole or in part. If a consensus of editors makes that judgement, I will accept that decision. --Airborne84 (talk) 03:19, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Does webword.com qualify as an "External Link"?

WP:ELNO states that "Links normally to be avoided" include:

  2. Any site that misleads the reader by use of factually inaccurate material or unverifiable research...

webword.com contains both factually inaccurate material and unverifiable research.

  16. Links that are not reliably functional, or likely to continue being functional.

http://webword.com/reports/ is an orphan page, meaning it cannot currently be accessed from the home page at webword.com.  Therefore http://www.webword.com/reports/period.html is also an orphan page.

Personally, I'd like to see a long list of links to the various discussions, opinion surveys, and blogs; and include webword in the list, but my sense is that this is against Wikipedia policy.  For that matter, do you know of any such directories?  RB 66.217.117.118 (talk) 22:57, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

We could certainly debate Webword at length. However, in this case, I believe that the article is still (arguably) allowable within Wikipedia's policies. Since the resource makes the article, and Wikipedia better, (IMO), we can save a lot of time debating by ignoring the possible applicability of bureaucratic rules that might detract from the usefulness of this link to the average reader on Wikipedia. If you feel strongly that it should be deleted, you can certainly ask other editors here to weigh in.

To address your question, (besides this article itself), I know of no directories. In fact, the Webword reference may be the best try at a collection of relevant studies and expert opinions. I researched this article through long hours of laborious research on the Web, trying to find everything I could on the topic. I have a long list of Websites bookmarked on my browser (well over 100 by now), but many are blogs and contain non-expert opinions that I could not and would not include here. They did help me to include in the article what would be helpful to those who discuss this matter online.

Most Websites are of marginal utility for this article though. Like many topics, the average person hasn't done research on this topic, and simply doesn't know the background and what experts have to say on the subject. I can share that insight after reading through hundreds (or perhaps thousands) of blog postings. Most expert opinions regarding this matter (with the exception of those noted in this article) are contained in print references.

I hope that helps. --Airborne84 (talk) 01:03, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Here is a link that is more useful and interesting than the existing one, yet it also happens to find webword.com first.  This is responsive to your desire to have this URL available to readers.  At at the same time we are not implying that the site is reliable, and if the site goes down, Google will adjust and our own link will still be valid.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22two+spaces%22+period+OR+%22full+stop%22
RB  66.217.117.162 (talk) 10:05, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

"webword.com contains both factually inaccurate material and unverifiable research." Elaborate on this accusation please. --Cybercobra (talk) 12:28, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

An "accusation" would be "a claim that someone has done something illegal or wrong" (Macmillan).  I am uncomfortable to respond on point as any such response would be in the context of the word "accusation," so I will just say that I am not aware of any accusations.  We also want to be careful here to respect Mr. Rhodes, who when he describes some of webword.com as "rant", is not suggesting that his rant has left the bounds of respectability.
RB  66.217.117.202 (talk) 21:46, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

In response to a request to document the existence of factually inaccurate material, as a part of determining whether the site is defined as a Wikipedia "reliable source," I submit that I am a degreed computer and software engineer, and I submit the following:

Technical Problems in www . web word . com / reports / period . html

spaces can be hard-coded into the HTML using "&nbsp".

No, the HTML tag also has a trailing semi-colon. The page's source code rendering is
  &quot;&amp;nbsp&quot;.

There is no apparent reason for the missing semi-colon.

most fonts used today are proportional. That is, each character is not the same size.

No, characters in a proportional font have fixed sizes.  Here is a link that shows that even the space has a fixed width (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/fdsspec/spaces.aspx)

in general, the spacing after a period will be irrelevant since most fonts used today are proportional. That is, each character is not the same size.

False premise, see previous example for why the premise is false.

For your information, I did not get any good feedback about the various fonts that are used for other Internet applications and activities, such as chat rooms and email. My guess is that they are mostly monospaced, but it is just a guess.

Earlier, we were told that the author "received a flood of email about this question."  But now he tells us that he has no report on fonts that are being used in email, and he "guesses" that the fonts used in email are mostly monospaced.

Like <name removed1>, <name removed2> told me that the current typographic standard for a single space after the period is a reflection of the power of proportionally spaced fonts.

I believe that this is what is known as an urban legend.  Proportionally spaced fonts have been around since the Gutenberg Bible.

"The only reason that two spaces were used after a period during the 'typewriter' age was because original typewriters had monospaced fonts -- the extra space was needed for the eye to pick up on the beginning of a new sentence. That need is negated w/proportional space type, hence [it is] the typographic standard."

Is there a research basis that this is a reason?  Is there a research basis that this is the "only reason"?  Once again, we see the urban legend about proportional fonts.  Here is what the more credible Bringhurst (2004) p. 28 says,

In the nineteenth century...many compositors were encouraged to stuff extra space between sentences. Generations of twentieth-century typists were then taught to do the same, by hitting the spacebar twice after every period.

In the days of typewriter manuscripts the extra space was necessary to separate the ends and beginnings of sentences.

No, we know from the "Sentence Spacing" article that people today submit single-sentence-spaced monospaced drafts to editors, so the extra space was a choice, never "necessary."

Many people told me about the various rules and style guides they follow. Similarly, several people indicated that etiquette is an important consideration for spacing after a period.
I looked up the word etiquette in m-w.com:

the conduct or procedure required by good breeding or prescribed by authority to be observed in social or official life

"In older documents printed in the US, you find it frequently, until the advent of the lead-casting Linotype machine.

The linotype used wedges for spaces, rectangles for letters. After filling the line as close as possible, the operator would pull a handle, and the wedges would be forced upward, expanding (and thereby justifying) the line o' type, which would then be cast in lead.

If the operator typed two spaces in a row, you had two wedges next to each other, and that tended to gum up the operation. Clients who insisted could be accommodated by typing an en-space followed by a justifier-space, but printers charged extra for it and ridiculed it as 'French Spacing, oo-la-la, you want it all fancy, huh? Well it'll cost ya, bub, and plenty too...' and soon it became unfashionable in the US.

Has the author had his staff of experts, lawyers, graduate students and/or QA people verify the facts here before publishing them?  No, he quotes an email.  The sentence, "In older documents printed in the US, you find <extra-wide sentence spacing> frequently, until the advent of the lead-casting Linotype machine" does not make sense, as the Linotype was used for 60 years before the extra space went out of fashion.  The content of the email is the quality found in blogs.  Like blog material, it might be interesting to check out, but nothing here can be relied upon without finding the same content in a reliable source.

The majority of the reference links are broken ten years later.

Eye tracking researcher Dr. Keith Rayner had this to say:

"With respect to the issue of spacing between words, see Rayner, Fischer, and Pollatsek (Vision Research, 1998, 38, 1129-1144). In 1975, I have a paper in Acta Psychologica that points out that readers skip over the spaces between sentences. You should also see a 1972 Reading Research Quarterly paper by Abrams and Zuber."

I admit that I was not able to follow up on Keith's references so I cannot give you any more details.

This is on point, but what we have here has no content, it is a pointer to content.  Is this the material we want to give to readers of Wikipedia?
RB  66.217.118.159 (talk) 04:46, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I have not documented the existence of "unverifiable research" as previously stated.  I submit that the following is an example of unverifiable research.

Many people told me about the various rules and style guides they follow...Apparently, the vast majority of these guides tell writers to use a single space.

The operational definitions of "style guide", "vast majority", "single space", and "writers" are not available.  Is a "vast majority" 67% or 99%?  Here is a try at an operational definition for "style guides": Style guides with an ISBN number with sales in the US in 1998 of more than 500 copies.  The word "writers" might be defined as "readers."  Does "single space" include or exclude style guides that specify "one or two spaces?"  A researcher would need these operational definitions to verify the research.
RB  66.217.118.161 (talk) 23:38, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

off-topic discussion moved

The following is moved from: == webword.com does not satisfy WP:SPS, WP:SOURCES, and WP:RS ==

By the way (and it has nothing to do with what we're discussing here, of course), I must admit to some curiosity as to why you force two spaces between your sentences in your posts here in HTML. Do you mind sharing your reasons? --Airborne84 (talk) 13:36, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

As to your personal question, the question is off topic as to whether or not webword.com is a reliable source for the five references; as well as, I think, off topic to the talk page itself.
RB  66.217.117.202 (talk) 23:32, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

As to the personal question regarding your double-spacing between sentences, you have no talk page. Thus I thought I would ask here why you feel so strongly about this subject that you feel you must force extra spacing in your posts. You certainly don't need to answer—although it could make other editors wonder if you are pushing a POV here. I, of course, will assume good faith on your part. --Airborne84 (talk) 03:19, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

RB  66.217.117.187 (talk) 08:02, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Airborne84,
Does Cybercobra "feel so strongly" that he "forces" color and bold when he signs his name?  I don't think so, I think he just uses his HTML skills to express personal style choices.  Since the white background of my display is yellowish, the "cobra" tends to fade.  But it doesn't occur to me to escalate this as an issue, I prefer to appreciate and respect the workmanship as an editor that goes into his signature (thanks, CyberCobra).

WP:DOOR states, "Be focused single-mindedly on writing an encyclopedia". 
Thanks, RB   66.217.118.104 (talk) 21:31, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

One-space activists

desktoppub.about.com has an insightful poll for the editors here.  It is still active, drawing 80 new votes since Friday (coi: I voted once for "Two spaces, looks better to me").

Data as of 2010-11-24:

One Space or Two After Punctuation, What's Your Preference?

One space, always (8561) 43%

Two spaces, looks better to me (9596) 48%

I'll try to convince my boss / clients / co-workers to go with one space (1605) 8%

Total Votes: 19762

There are two interesting points here.  One is, that there are "one-space activists," people who are motivated to convince other people to change their style preference.  This is a surprising 8% of respondents to this poll.

The second point is that almost half of the respondents prefer more spacing.
RB  66.217.118.104 (talk) 22:47, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

I've seen this. I have more examples of the same if you're interested. I don't know why it would be insightful to the editors here though. This isn't a surprise to most people that are familiar with this topic.

On a related topic, I had considered (while writing this article) that the "controversy" section could be its own article, and only summarized here (it's relatively summarized now) in a similar manner to the other sections with links to main articles. It would be a bit tricky to write, since most opinions on the WWW are non-expert and anecdotal (plenty of Twitter and Facebook feeds and "comments" on relevant articles, for example), but it would probably still make an interesting sister article to this one. I ran out of steam while putting these articles together. Why don't you write it? There are other opportunities to contribute here too. You could take on one of the "knowledge gap" areas (see the FAQ) of this article. For example, I was not able to discover why very early printers chose em spacing between sentences. The early works that are in this article did not cover the reasoning. There is also not a comprehensive record of why printers in the US and the UK moved from double-spacing to single spacing (although I've seen some speculation). You can help improve these articles in these areas.

Thanks. --Airborne84 (talk) 23:12, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

It was a surprise to me based on what I read in this article.  It goes to show that the article is unbalanced.  RB  66.217.118.159 (talk) 03:09, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I have to agree. This article appears to be biased towards one-spacing, despite mentioning that there is conflict over the issue. This article ignores why people still support the two-spacing rule. Squad51 (talk) 03:16, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

"This article ignores why people still support the two-spacing rule." These reasons are captured in the "Controversy" section. As far as the bias, you'll have to ask the experts why they are biased. This article is simply a collection of encyclopedic sources which reflects their positions.

"It goes to show that the article is unbalanced." There are other possible conclusions.     One is that the average person is simply not educated on what experts say on this topic.

See WP:UNDUE regarding the assertion of "unbalanced". Although the "Controversy" section is an important section, the opinion and advice of experts captured by reliable sources is what is important at Wikipedia. If you feel that their collective position is unbalanced, you have various recourses—but most of them lie outside of Wikipedia. --Airborne84 (talk) 03:46, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Style manual references

I find this interesting: "with a few permitting double spacing in draft manuscripts and for specific circumstances". When I submitted a manuscript to a publisher earlier this year, the guidelines required double spacing after a period. This was a piece submitted via the internet, to boot. Squad51 (talk) 03:13, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I wonder if the style requirement for sentential spacing was in a published source.
RB  66.217.118.166 (talk) 00:25, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

This is captured in the article in the controversy section. "Proponents of double sentence spacing also state that some publishers may still require double spaced manuscript submissions from authors." The passage is not sourced though. If you'd like to improve the article, you can provide a supporting reference. There is a risk that someone that comes along that has a POV supporting single sentence spacing might delete this passage because it is not sourced. --Airborne84 (talk) 01:27, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I would also agree that the sentence could be improved, it introduces the idea that there are "proponents of double sentence spacing" unnecessarily.  Is this really a concept that exists in secondary references, or is this WP:OR?
RB  66.217.118.161 (talk) 21:24, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I didn't source the first part of the sentence because I didn't think it was contentious material. You posted a poll above that could support the first four words of the sentence. I don't think it's necessary to add it though, unless you disagree. I think the idea that there are no proponents of double sentence spacing would be idiosyncratic, were someone to suggest that here. --Airborne84 (talk) 21:39, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

"Untitled Document" is not a reliable source WP:SOURCES WP:QS

WP:SOURCES states

Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy...In general, the best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments

"Untitled Document" is the name of the web page at: www.aect.org/events/review/PropResults.asp?submit=View+Full+Proposal.&propid=148

The publisher of "Untitled Document" is the AECT, the author is unknown, and the date is unknown but prior to 10/30/09.  The page is advertising for a 30-minute session at a professional conference.  The page contains an abstract, the name of a presenter, and three co-presenters.

The page shows workmanship errors in the typography for special characters, such as "today?s".  There are perhaps six such errors.

There is no reason to think that the paper associated with this conference session has been published.  We can therefore also assume that the abstract has not been refereed. 

The abstract itself contains information known to be factually incorrect, such as, "Two spaces were necessary to visually break up the space and reinforce the end of a sentence."

"Untitled Document" is referenced four times in the article.  The citation listed for "Untitled Document" is:

Leonard, Kristi, et al. (1 February 2003). "The Effects of Computer-based Text Spacing on Reading Comprehension and Reading Rate". IVLA. www.aect.org/events/review/PropResults.asp?submit=View+Full+Proposal.&propid=148. Retrieved 1 February 2010.

A publication date of 1 February 2003 is not supported by the web page.  Google shows that there was a proposal for this paper posted in March 2008.  The web page presumably was posted months before 10/30/09, and the conference was scheduled 10/30/09.
RB  66.217.118.159 (talk) 09:35, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:V clearly allows this source.

1. Not that it matters, but a "source" at Wikipedia can be a person (see WP:V). The "people" that wrote this conducted the direct studies on sentence spacing and have published multiple papers on the topic. However, this is not the only relevant section of WP:V.

2. "Today?s". Not relevant. However, this happens frequently in Web documents. The question mark sometimes replaces apostrophes and quotation marks between the source to the browser that renders the material. (In case you were wondering.)

3. The International Visual Language Association schedules conferences quite often. This conference happened in 2003, and the article that this source is discussing was published in the IVLA conference bulletin. You can obtain it for $20 if you'd like. I'll be happy to give you the contact information. I thought that this would be better for Wikipedia readers because they could actually see the words "most style guides".

4. Author unknown? Please check again. You typed/pasted the authors above.

5. "Information known to be factually incorrect." We've discussed the irrelevancy of this assertion before (truth vs. verifiability). I understand that you don't like the content matter. Please be careful about doing what I've seen other editors do here when they arrive at this article. They run into WP:IDON'TLIKEIT and WP:SOAP. --Airborne84 (talk) 13:35, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

The citation currently reads,

Leonard, Kristi, et al. (1 February 2003). "The Effects of Computer-based Text Spacing on Reading Comprehension and Reading Rate". IVLA.

If you analyze Dr. Branch's 2010 CV) I think you will agree with me that K. Leonard did not author papers before 2008.

Regarding which publication is supposed to be the reference, I wrote,

A publication date of 1 February 2003 is not supported by the web page.

You wrote,

This conference happened in 2003, and the article that this source is discussing was published in the IVLA conference bulletin.

Please make up your mind, do you want to cite a 2003 paper or do you want to cite K. Leonard's 2009 conference presentation, or do you want to cite "Untitled Document"?  (I've changed my mind, I think that the 2009 paper has been published—somewhere.)  Have you seen your reference?

Also, see WP:SOURCEACCESS

Thanks,
RB  66.217.118.17 (talk) 15:55, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I believe the source [www.aect.org/events/review/PropResults.asp?submit=View+Full+Proposal.&propid=148] is reliable. AECT is an educational organization, that the article appears on a web page instead of a peer reviewed journal may speak to the relative quality of the source, but does not mean it is unreliable. Presentations at conferences are generally vetted by the scholarly community. I do agree that the date of the work appears to be wrong, but that also does not mean the source is unreliable--mistakes do get made. I also note this related material. Having said that, this is a primary research work, and thus not the best source--a secondary source would be better. --Nuujinn (talk) 20:36, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

My apologies. I didn't read some of your (RB) post thoroughly because some of it seemed irrelevant to the thesis of your thread, which was ostensibly captured in the title that you chose. I'll check the date for the reference again. It's possible that I typed the date incorrectly. Thanks. --Airborne84 (talk) 01:10, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

The "related material" SPSResearchProposal.pdf shows that the paper was not published in November 2007.  Any content in there has the status of a draft.

That is also true of an abstract that would have been submitted to the website at AECT months before the conference.  Abstract (summary) shows that an abstract has a "Conclusions" section.  Neither of these online abstracts have Conclusions...they are works in progress.

If the information in drafts is important, should the Article identify the information as preliminary?  Also, the primary author of the Article states, "For this subject, the standard of reliability will be held to a higher level than normally seen on Wikipedia."

I won't go into more detail, but analysis shows important differences between the SPSResearchProposal.pdf and "Untitled Document". 

For now, the author needs to decide which of these various possible references he intended.
RB  66.217.117.124 (talk) 01:52, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Not at all. The reference I provided is indeed a proposal, and one would expect differences between a proposal and a conference presentation made later. But the this is, I think, a reliable source indicating that the paper was presented at a professional conference. It is a primary source, and a secondary source would be preferable. --Nuujinn (talk) 02:03, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Nuujinn, do you agree that the Abstract at this has no "Results" and no "Conclusion" sections, thus will be modified in the published paper?
Thanks,
RB  66.217.117.124 (talk) 02:46, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

The reference in the "Sentence spacing" article is to the online abstract for the article by the authors noted above. I debated (when writing this article) whether to use the online abstract or the article in the conference bulletin. However, the only option I found was to obtain it from the source, and the cost of the bulletin was $20 in 2009 (it could be more now). I finally decided to use the online abstract because it is immediately available to Wikipedia readers. WP:V doesn't imply anything about ease of access, but I thought readers would like to see for themselves what the authors said, rather than be presented with a difficult (and expensive) to obtain reference.

Also, RB please keep in mind that you are focused on the article itself. If you check WP:V again, you will see that a source can take three forms, the work itself (in this case article), the author(s), and the publisher. You've already stated that you agree that the article is published, but let's say you decide to recant and don't wish to pay to obtain the article in the conference bulletin itself. You can still rely on the publisher (AECT)—which is reliable—and the author(s). You've already posted Dr. Branch's CV. He alone is a reliable source, so I don't think the CV for, or credentials of, the other authors are necessary. Dr. Branch's should suffice. Thus, the reference in the "Sentence spacing" article is a reliable source. --Airborne84 (talk) 02:56, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

(ec)No, I don't agree. There's no conclusion section nor a results section, but I cannot on that basis conclude what might or might have happened in any published version. What's your point? --Nuujinn (talk) 02:58, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Nuujinn, the point was to move toward consensus.  It has been 30 years since I have been in a library looking for a research paper, but I can't imagine why the abstract of a published paper would not have a conclusion.  I don't know why you would not be confident in agreeing, or at least saying that it was more than likely.  Thanks, RB  66.217.117.117 (talk) 03:22, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Loh, Branch, Shewanown, and Ali. (2002) "The Effect of Text Spacing After the Period..."

The following blockquote is the current text in the Article that relates to this study:

The citations read:

Loh, Christian Sebastian, Robert Maribe Branch, Saun Shewanown, and Radwan Ali. "The Effect of Text Spacing After the Period on Time for On-Screen Reading Tasks". IVLA Book of Selected Readings: Selected Readings of the IVLA Annual Conference. IVLA. 2002.

98 ^ Loh et al., 2002. p. 4.

The text from the Article reads:

Direct studies include those by Loh, Branch, Shewanown, and Ali (2002)...The 2002 study tested participants' reading speed for single and double sentence spaced passages of on-screen text. The authors stated that "the 'double space group' consistently took longer time to finish than the 'single space' group", but concluded that "there was not enough evidence to suggest that a significant difference exists".[98]

A power point presentation exists online: The Effect of Text Spacing After the Period.ppt

The powerpoint presentation shows that there was a second conclusion in addition to the one listed in the Article: "Since there (is) no added advantage in advocating sentence separation using single-space over double-space, our recommendation is to adhere to the longstanding practice of using double-space for sentence separation, be it in print or for online document."
RB  66.217.117.124 (talk) 05:17, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the actual article itself (which also was difficult to obtain) had similar language. However, the following sentence was inserted immediately afterward: "As this article was being prepared for print in accordance with the IVLA guideline for 'Selected Readings,' the authors noticed that the block justification stipulated would preclude the use of double spacing in text separation." Block justification doesn't preclude putting two spaces between sentences. I suspect that the authors simply weren't aware that the IVLA's publishing guidelines called for single spacing. Also, the statement, "long-standing practice of using double space for sentence separation" would only have been true if they had added the caveat "with typewriters", and removed "online documents", since their own chosen venue provided a glaring contradiction. In 2002, this caveat would still have accurately reflected a few major style guides that hadn't yet transitioned. Anyway, the error in accuracy is irrelevant at Wikipedia. Therefore I had considered putting both of these sentences in, but eventually decided against it. (1). The "studies" section was originally much larger and more detailed. I had to drastically strip out extraneous material IAW the Featured Article Candidate page comments. (2) I wasn't sure how to fit it in the "studies" section since their recommendation doesn't come directly from their research. Thus, it would have better fit into the history section as a year-2002 secondary source recommendation—similar to many style guides before they changed (the authors do not make similar recommendations in their later articles). (3). This would have been embarrasing to the authors.

The third reason was the most important for me. Although I found the situation a bit humorous, I decided against putting potentially embarrassing information for the authors in the article. --Airborne84 (talk) 06:15, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Dr. Branch's 2010 CV shows that the paper was peer-reviewed.
RB  66.217.117.184 (talk) 10:09, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Just a comment, regarding "the block justification stipulated would preclude the use of double spacing in text separation," I think I understand that, since that was often the case, although rarely now. I used to use two spaces on my royal electric, but had to give that up when I moved to a computer. With full justification enabled, in most word processors (at least during the late 1980s and the 1990s) sometimes the second space would carry over to the next line. This was especially true of fixed width fonts. --Nuujinn (talk) 10:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Nuujinn, I'm sure you're right about what you stated. If the authors were concerned about possible spacing issues, it would be a valid concern. An editor at the Chicago Manual of Style noted various related issues (including the one you mention, I think) here. However, I doubt that the authors would have been able to have the IVLA change their publishing guidelines for their specific article. Perhaps.

RB, I'm not arguing that the article isn't a reliable source. I considered adding the passages myself. I'm simply stating the reasons why I decided to not include them. --Airborne84 (talk) 18:08, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Airborne84, given my experience in academia, I doubt they would have even asked. (;

Airborne84, this is a peer-reviewed article with possibly the single most-important research conclusion on the topic of Sentence Spacing.  I haven't seen anyone say so, but I wouldn't doubt that this research conclusion was a factor in the changes at MLA and APA back to two spaces.  Understand that the paper is about on-screen spacing, so the "long-standing practice of using double space for sentence separation" for example might be traced to the 1984 Chicago Guide.  The APA change from 2 to 1 occurred in 1994, so a research study in 2002 could still be reacting to the change made in 1994.  I don't know what you mean about "a venue with a glaring contradiction."
RB  66.217.117.117 (talk) 02:05, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean by "research conclusion". Their research was inconclusive, as noted by the authors. Thus their recommendation was to simply maintain what they thought was the status quo. Their conclusion was then, to "adhere to the longstanding practice of using double-space for sentence separation" (a surprising statement). Their "venue" was the IVLA bulletin, which used single sentence spacing in their final publication. Given what we know about the "longstanding practice of using double-space for sentence separation" we can see that this statement by the authors is potentially embarrassing. Also, these authors conducted further (published) studies and did not repeat this recommendation, in effect, updating their position.

There's nothing in Wikipedia's policies that precludes us from adding this material in one of the articles. I had several reasons for not including these passages (already described above), but the primary one was not to embarrass the authors. I thought you would agree on this point since you stated the following above:

"We also want to be careful here to respect Mr. Rhodes"

"I wouldn't be surprised if K. Leonard googles to this online discussion someday, so please keep the tone professional."

These were in reference to the talk page. Are you saying that you want to include material that would be potentially embarrasing to the authors in the article itself? That seems inconsistent with your consideration for other authors above.

Also, I understand that you are new to Wikipedia, but please stop moving my comments. See WP:TALK, which states, "Never edit or move someone's comment to change its meaning, even on your own talk page" (emphasis in original). Thanks. --Airborne84 (talk) 04:01, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Are you asserting that I changed meaning, or are you only objecting to re-factoring the text?  RB  66.217.117.117 (talk) 05:50, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I simply don't want you to move or edit my comments. I think that is plain enough. Thanks. --Airborne84 (talk) 06:08, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

"This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Sentence spacing article."
WP:TALK Talk pages are for improving the encyclopedia, not for expressing personal opinions on a subject or an editor."

WP:TALKO on "Refactoring for relevance:off-topic content", WP:REFACTOR, and WP:OAGF.

WP:TOPPOST Make a new heading for a new topic

Please note that discussion here is off-topic and subject to refactoring, including by yourself.  Thanks, RB 66.217.117.134 (talk) 09:52, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm glad that you've now read the talk page guidelines, although perhaps selectively. Did you read this? "Editing – or even removing – others' comments is sometimes allowed. But you should exercise caution in doing so, and normally stop if there is any objection."

I'll readd my (repasted) comments that that you removed that you yourself added in a thread above and ask a final time for you to stop removing my comments.

If you'd like to discuss this further, feel free to do so on my talk page—the normal venue for such discussions. Since you have none, I was forced to voice my objection to your multiple selective edits, deletions, and movements of my comments here, even though this itself is off topic to improving this article. --Airborne84 (talk) 18:05, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Chicago Guide to Preparing Electronic Manuscripts for Authors and Publishers (1987)

To show that this is a current style guide, I'm quoting from the SBL Handbook of Style.  The current edition of SBL Handbook of Style (1999), 2006 reprint ISBN 9781565634879, notes on page 1, "we have consulted various of these standard manuals...and also the now somewhat dated Chicago Guide to Preparing Electronic Manuscripts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)."

The Chicago Guide (ISBN 0226103927) reads on page 16, "It may prove helpful to you to develop the habit of leaving two spaces after punctuation that ends sentences...Such a procedure will allow you to search for the ends (or beginnings) of sentences...If your publisher requires only one space between sentences...you can...globally change all two-space instances to a single space...Since many typesetters seem untroubled by whether you leave one or two spaces between sentences, the Press recommends that its authors leave two."
RB  66.217.117.184 (talk) 10:42, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Noted. This isn't unusual for style guides from the 1980s.

If you'd like to include the SBL Handbook itself, I'd recommend that it go in the main article, Sentence spacing in language and style guides, as that is more of an encyclopedia collection of style guides; the section here is only a summary of that one. Key information also would be:

1. Guidelines from the 2006 SBL Handbook on sentence spacing (if any).

2. Whether the 2006 SBL Handbook is itself single or double sentence spaced.

3. What other style guides and references the SBL Handbook refers to besides a guide that it itself notes is "somewhat dated".

Depending on the above information, the main article venue offers more leeway in detailing the nuances. Feel free to add it if you think that it is worthwhile.

By the way, I'm happy to see that you have moved to a more constructive (IMO) approach of further research to add relevant material. Thanks. --Airborne84 (talk) 04:05, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

APA Style Lite for College Papers January 2010

APA Style Lite for College Papers January 2010

p. 1

"The last edition of the APA Manual advised students that "the Publication Manual is not intended to cover scientific writing at an undergraduate level" (APA, 2001, p. 322).  They meant it!  While the last edition devoted a chapter to "Material Other Than Journal Articles" as an aid for students (chapter 6), the current edition has eradicated all such guidance.  Take this advice from the APA: "Not writing for publication?  Not our problem!"
...
The APA calls papers written for publication copy manuscripts.  They are formatted to aid the publication process, not the reader.  When not writing for publication "the manuscript must be as readable as possible" (APA, 2001, p. 323).  The APA calls these papers final manuscripts".
...
"APA Lite is a guide to crafting final manuscripts."

p. 6

Space once after (most) punctuation? (sic) However, "spacing twice after punctuation marks at the end of a sentence aids readers of draft manuscripts" (APA, 2009, p. 88)"

(emphasis added)
RB  66.217.118.58 (talk) 20:50, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

There is a long section at Sentence spacing in language and style guides with added notes describing the changing position of the APA over the last few years. At first glance (although I haven't scrubbed the source yet), I don't see why the above material couldn't be added to the APA section there, although the statement on page 88 that you note was adjusted by the APA.

I read your other posts on style guides too. Might I recommend that you post these same sections at Talk:Sentence spacing in language and style guides as well? That article is the repository (currently) for sentence spacing in style guides and this is the kind of material that could feasibly be added there (the section here is just an overall summary).

Thanks. --Airborne84 (talk) 00:26, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Please consider that on November 19 a key author of the Article still thought that, "No known style guide published after 1990 prescribes double sentence spacing for final or published work."  Sentence spacing in digital media still says, "However, writers who wish to use wider sentence spacing should avoid striking the space bar twice..."  The Sentence spacing article itself still says that two-spacing is "obsolete" and "foolish".  These notes are documenting the rest of the story.  Thanks,  RB  66.217.117.117 (talk) 02:57, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

MLA (Style) Lite for Research Papers

MLA Lite for Research Papers - Fall 2009

p. 2

Space twice after punctuation at the ends of sentences

RB  66.217.118.58 (talk) 21:55, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

This wasn't published by MLA (although the source certainly could be an RS). Given a secondary source analysis on MLA Style that conflicts with the actual MLA Style Guide(s), the primary source should be used to provide the "position of the MLA". You can see the position of the MLA in Sentence spacing in language and style guides.

If you'd like to discuss further, I'd recommend posting this thread at that talk page so the "watchers" there can also take part in the discussion. --Airborne84 (talk) 00:35, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

SBL Handbook of Style

I've moved discussion here that was off-topic to == Chicago Guide to Preparing Electronic Manuscripts ==

I'm quoting from the SBL Handbook of Style.  The current edition of SBL Handbook of Style (1999), 2006 reprint ISBN 9781565634879, notes on page 1, "we have consulted various of these standard manuals...and also the now somewhat dated Chicago Guide to Preparing Electronic Manuscripts."
RB

If you'd like to include the SBL Handbook itself, I'd recommend that it go in the main article, Sentence spacing in language and style guides, as that is more of an encyclopedia collection of style guides; the section here is only a summary of that one. Key information also would be:

1. Guidelines from the 2006 SBL Handbook on sentence spacing (if any).

2. Whether the 2006 SBL Handbook is itself single or double sentence spaced.

3. What other style guides and references the SBL Handbook refers to besides a guide that it itself notes is "somewhat dated".

Depending on the above information, the main article venue offers more leeway in detailing the nuances. Feel free to add it if you think that it is worthwhile.

--Airborne84 (talk) 18:26, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

RB  66.217.118.58 (talk) 22:08, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

In case an editor wants that data, here it is:

APA Style cite:
Alexander, P. H., & Society of Biblical Literature. (1999). The SBL handbook of style: For ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and early Christian studies. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers.

In addition to the Chicago Guide they use CMS 14th edition and the "Instructions for Contributors" in the Journal of Biblical Literature 117 (1998): 555-79.

p. 7

3.1.1.10 Spaces after Punctuation

Only one space is needed after any punctuation that ends a sentence and also after a colon.

As to point 2, that would be WP:OR, and also, not all spacing is single or double.
RB  66.217.118.58 (talk) 22:58, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll post this at Talk:Sentence spacing in language and style guides. --Airborne84 (talk) 00:55, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Ok, thanks, and if you want, you can move this section there as well.  RB  66.217.117.117 (talk) 02:22, 28 November 2010 (UTC)