Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2000 18:11:33 -0700 From: Brooks Davis <brooks@one-eyed-alien.net> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Punctuation conventions (was: cvs commit: src/games/fortune/datfiles fortunes) Message-ID: <20000601181133.A28687@orion.ac.hmc.edu> In-Reply-To: <20000602090744.Q20158@wantadilla.lemis.com>; from grog@lemis.com on Fri, Jun 02, 2000 at 09:07:45AM %2B0930 References: <FCEELIAEIIECDGKKJLMIKECDCAAA.troy@picus.com> <20000601111501.A11561@sophos.com> <FCEELIAEIIECDGKKJLMIKECDCAAA.troy@picus.com> <20000601141807.A40162@keltia.freenix.fr> <4.3.2.7.2.20000601162717.04482370@localhost> <20000602090744.Q20158@wantadilla.lemis.com>
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On Fri, Jun 02, 2000 at 09:07:45AM +0930, Greg Lehey wrote: > On Thursday, 1 June 2000 at 16:29:25 -0600, Brett Glass wrote: > > That convention dates back to the time of hand-set type and has, of late, > > been abandoned. One space is now not only acceptable but preferred in > > business correspondence. > > Do you have any documentation to back this up? I did some actual research and found it confusing. First, a definitive argument in favor of the double space is in the 3rd ed. or "The Writer's Reference" by Diana Hacker published in 1995. All example texts have two spaces. Second, a rather muddy FAQ from the Chicago Manual of Style. It is at http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/cmosfaq.html#8 and states: Q. This question relates to the number of spaces after a period ending a sentence. Monospaced "typewriter" style calls for two spaces; proportional spaced "typeset" calls for only one. Yet as we make a transition away from typewriters to proportional spacing on computers, is there a rule as to how many spaces you should put after a period ending a sentence? A. All our electronic manuscripts are prepared with a single space between sentences, since typesetting does not require the extra space, which is merely a typewriter convention. It all comes down to how you interpret "electronic manuscripts." If you interpret them as any text in electronic form then Brett is correct. I would be more inclined to believe that then mean, text in electronic form intended to be output via a typesetting system. Standard Internet e-mail is formatted with monospacing in mind and thus it would seem that it should adopt the typewrite convention. Argueably, mdoc and SGML documents should not because they are intended to be typeset not read directly. -- Brooks -- Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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