Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Archive (spaces after a full stop/period)

message: I'm commenting very late on this, I know, but what seems to have been overlooked in all previous discussion of this issue is that the mere phrasing of the questions and opinions herein in terms of "spaces" implies that "space" is a character like any other, and that its width is necessarily constant. While it is true that it has historically been implemented this way on keyboards, in character encodings, and in publications both tangible and virtual for reasons that date back to the advent of the printing press, it is still just a one-size-fits-all approximation of inter-word space. This is just one of several uses of "white space" in the Latin/Roman writing system (script) that we use in English and other Western European languages. HTML 4 acknowledged this point, and actually considers a space character (or runs of consecutive space characters) to represent a word separator that is actually to be rendered as appropriate for the language in use.
So, when rendering text in those languages and scripts in which words are not normally separated by the familiar en-dash sized horizontal gap, the "number of spaces" question is reduced to "what's an appropriate way to render the words on either side of this separator?". Instead of asking "one [fixed-width, generic] space or two after a full stop?", instead ask (1) what is the amount of horizontal space (NOT in terms of fixed-width space characters) after a full stop in handwritten text in the English language, (2) how closely should typeset text reproduce this (e.g., how do kerning and other characteristics of the typeface factor into the appropriate amount of space), (3) how can we best approximate this space using the tools at our disposal, and (4) how should text rendering engines like those used in web browsers be improved to make things better (e.g., can they be made able to recognize the difference between inter-word space and inter-sentence space and other kinds of space, and make adjustments accordingly?). 
Granted, this may not have any bearing on what goes on in Wikipedia today, but I feel that if people are going to discuss ideal spacing in general, they should not be thinking that all spaces are created equal and that the only question is how many of them to put in a row. - mjb 07:41, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Better Questions to be Asking 

message: For my two cents, I prefer two spaces.  For me they are useful when skimming or speed reading as it makes it easier to recognize sentance structures.  
I was also taught that two spaces are proper and have the combonation of "period + space + space" engrained in my motor memory.  After 16 years of typing, it would take a bit to unlearn this behavior.  
N8dawg 22:47, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I am a staunch supporter of the single-space following a period rule. Yes, I also learned to use two spaces when taught typing back in 1974! That time is long past, and should stay that way. The deciding factor for me was Robin Williams' books, "The Mac is Not a Typewriter"  and "The PC is Not a Typewriter" . These books go into great detail how the Personal Computer age is different from the Smith-Corona age. When editing a page/section, as a matter of course, I do remove extra spaces. Alan 03:24, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Two Spaces 

message: This is not an actual archive, is it? If it is, then there seems to be no current version...Ardric47 07:49, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Archive? 

message: Just want to break a lance in favour of Maylett, et al. above, regarding their observations on the unecessary use of double spaces after full stops. While I can understand the traditionalists' points of view (no pun intended), I think that certain conventions are perpetuated unecessarily in all aspects of life (don't psychologists refer to conservative adjustments?). I spend a lot of my spare time anonymously tidying up article pages - there are one helluva lotta typos out there - and whilst I'm at it, remove extra spaces which appear in many weird places between words in general, and even in the same paragraph obviously written by the same contributor (I have actually checked this on the history log of many articles, just out of morbid interest), I often come across inconsistent use of single or double spaces after full stops. 
Just by way of - unrelated, but illustrative - example of weirdo things that we do without thinking, or out of a blind faith in what we have been taught, since the beginning of typewriting, Spanish teachers, not only of typing but also of the language itself, have taught that the tilde (´) was not necessary when using (typing and handwriting) capital letters. This apparently came about because typewriter keys physically prevented the combination, and the convention was perpetuated until modern times, by which I mean today. The result is that most Spaniards - regardless of their level of education - erroneously and honestly believe that they can write words like hábito, habito and habitó, all of which have differing meanings, as one HABITO. And the computer spell-checker is of course useless in such cases.
If writing - as opposed to the spoken word - has as its main purpose that of avoiding any possible confusion being created in the person at the receiving end, it must obviously do so by excluding any elements which might distract the eye. 
However, as this kind of debate may eventually lead to blood being shed by diehards who miss the point entirely, and arguments are often won by those who bang their fists on the table more vehemently, in the interest of world peace and brevity (wikipedia's talk page guidelines suggest no more than 100 words for a note on a talk page), I would like to suggest that from now on we all dedicait much more of our spare time to corrrecting soem of the realy sereious misteakes in puncntuasion, grammer, ect. that abownd in this wondrerful comon prodject that we are fortunat enugh to shaire. 
I hereby solemnly swear that I shall resist all temptation to add another word to this talk page. Thanks you for bearing with me. 83.180.179.143 23:42, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Another latecomer