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 [2] indicates she/he has some experience in this area. Please feel free to address these comments listed at: [3] 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. [4] 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)

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)

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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

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