Source
Automatically imported from: http://commons.somewhere.com:80/rre/1999/RRE.s.after.html
Content
This web service brought to you by Somewhere.Com, LLC.
[RRE]#'s after .
``` [I enclose a sample of the typographical passions that I stirred up among RRE readers by taking sides in the one-space-versus-two-spaces- after-a-period wars. Forwarded with permission and reformatted to 70 columns -- but with the spaces unaltered.]
---
This message was forwarded through the Red Rock Eater News Service (RRE). Send any replies to the original author, listed in the From: field below. You are welcome to send the message along to others but please do not use the "redirect" command. For information on RRE, including instructions for (un)subscribing, see http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/rre.html or send a message to requests@lists.gseis.ucla.edu with Subject: info rre
---
Date: Tue, 06 Jul 1999 07:46:03 +0000
From: Susan Kirkland
I went to art college 1971-75 before computers came into my field--advertising design. I received an extensive education in kerning (space between letters) line spacing, calculating copy characters and keeping things square eventhough one may be totally inept. My first job included actually setting headlines on a two-finger grip fontsetter where I viewed my headline through a shotgun type sight. Nothing taught me more about letter spacing than setting those headlines and employing the information I'd learned in school about how people read type by the negative area, not the positive area. Play with the word --The-- when you have time. You'll learn a lot.
When the computer entered things, one of the first cliches I heard was, "The first sign of a novice on the keyboard is 2 spaces after the period." That's bullshit generated by some programmer who decided his magic code would automatically correctly space type--afterall, he'd put kerning in. Well, any professional designer will tell you that most professional page layout programs aren't very professional at all. Designers think in terms of line length for copy blocks (like, any line longer than 18 picas will tax your readers eye muscles swooping from left to right, so don't do it if your copy is long and you want to keep them) yet page layout programs demand margins before you even open a file--making me work assbackwards . There are lots of little giveaways like this that show me programmers used less than well educated designers as source information when writing these things--the same programmers dictating to me, a type professional, that I need use only one space after the period. That doesn't work for me because the same program that's geared to minimize the space between a W and an A doesn't seem to know the difference when there's a period/space between them; then there's no separation of sentences, at least not enough to signify the end of a thought. I think these are the same people in Universities nationwide that don't see much difference between journalism and advertising or desktop publishing and design. Nothing makes me angrier than places like the University of Houston letting their silly journalism people spend hundreds of thousands of dollars producing brochures and catalogues that look like a high school year book office put them out when there are qualified designers out there looking for work.
So I love to hear how double spacing after a period signals a novice. You keep double spacing, Phil.
Susan Kirkland Director of Advertising Maxxim Medical, Inc.
Date: Sun, 4 Jul 1999 18:12:21 -0700 (PDT) From: Ralph_Giles@sfu.ca
[...] I find double spacing between sentences helpful in some monospaced fronts, so perhaps you're justified of those grounds. (Though with the font I'm looking at now it just looks like you've poked holes here and there in the text. :)
Here's what Robert Bringhurst's Typographic Manual of Style has to say on the subject. (A book that should be required reading in school)
<< In the nineteenth century, which was a dark and inflationary age in typography and type design, many compositors were encouraged to stuff extra space between sentences. Generation of twentieth-centry typists were then taught to do the same, by hitting the spacebar twice after every period. Your typing as well as your typesetting with benifit from unlearning this quaint Victorian habit. As a general rule, no more than a single space is required after a period , a colon or any other mark of puctuation. Larger spaces (e.g., en spaces) are themselves punctuation.
The rule is usually altered, however, when setting classical Latin and Greek, romanized Sanskrit, phonetics or other kinds of texts in which sentences begin with lowercase letters. In the absence of a capital, a full en space (M/2) between sentences will generally be welcome. >> pp. 28-30 Cheers, -ralph
---
Ralph_Giles@sfu.ca information design? what's that?
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 08:46:59 +0000
From: Susan Kirkland
I don't know who Robert Bringhurst is, but one of the reasons compositors in the nineteenth century added an extra space after the period was during the dreaded quest for justified copy--the lowest form of typesetting and mostly just used in newspapers now. That way, they were assured most of the extra space would end up between sentences first, between words second and, God forbid, between characters last.
Seen justified type lately? Bill Clinton said he n e v e r i n h a l e d.
Both the en and em were created to fill the empty spaces in the hot metal type forms. We don't have those problems to solve anymore, but people still use en and em to label space size.
But those are all minor details. Ralph is speaking of typography from a strictly technical point of view; (the mechanics) like buying clothes off the rack. I'm talking about sensitive typographic aesthetics; (fine tuning the delicate nuances) something that can only be had from a tailor.
When typography first went from hot to cold--output by some machine called a Compugraphic--where the machine would put font disks in front of photographic paper and expose each character (very fast); you could select machine kerning or have it composed. Composing involved the typographer reviewing the first run, marking it up for hand kerning and sending it back. Even today, in Pagemaker (the layout program I prefer), the new option of professional kerning is available in the menu. But I frequently adjust my type by holding down option command and using the arrow keys between individual characters. Most professional designers do--probably no desktop publishers do.
The point is--I'm a master designer and getting flak from a secretary about putting 2 spaces after a period is like telling Chagal there's a little too much blue in the left corner.
Though the machines have limitations, some technological and some based on constraints that were determined by the source designers the programmers used when first writing the programs, computers have allowed me to concentrate in visual terms instead of mathematical terms when working. This is a real boon because as you know, switching from different sides of the brain slows things considerably. Also, the technical production quality of my work has not deteriorated as I got older--which is also a major benefit. I just can't do anything less than square--thank God.
I love talking about this. It's exciting to talk about type. SDK
Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1999 09:07:45 +0000
From: Susan Kirkland
And besides--
Expert kerning is determined by weighing the negative space of one character against the negative space of the next, seeing how the two interact and then balancing this combination against the rest of the letters in the word, making it as tight as possible without losing balance within the word. Tight is important because it encapsulates the individual character's negative space better, allowing you to read faster. But you knew that, right?
Knowing this, and relying on the mechanical letter spacing available in today's code, is it sensible to arbitrarily decide it is silly to put 2 spaces after a period in something that is so haphazard? No, just give me good separation where a group of words ends--whether you know how to kern your type properly or not. Now there's a good rule.
SDK ```
This web service brought to you by Somewhere.Com, LLC.