Re: line adjustment at the end of a sentence

[Eric Abrahamsen]

On Thu, Sep 27 2012, Barry Margolin wrote:

> In article <mailman.9790.1348681903.855.help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>,
>  "Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:
>
>> > The number of spaces between English sentences has been 
>> > gradually switching from two to one.
>> 
>> Dunno about that.  Mostly I think people just use plain text less and 
>> formatted
>> text more nowadays.
>
> Right. The old convention was for typewriters with fixed-width fonts, 
> and Emacs was designed for the same type of text processing.
>
> I don't think it was ever applied to typeset text, and most people now 
> use word processors that generate comparable output.

For everyone's entertainment, the following is from Bringhurst's
excellent _The Elements of Typographic Style_:

"2.1.4 Use a single word space between sentences.

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. Generations of twentieth-century typists
were then taught to do the same, by hitting the spacebar twice after
every period. Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from
unlearning this quaint Victorian habit."

Obviously, emacs still needs to be able to handle it!

E

-- 
GNU Emacs 24.2.50.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.4.4)
 of 2012-09-16 on pellet