Sentence spacing in the digital age
Encyclopedia
Sentence spacing in digital media is the horizontal space between sentences in computer and web-based media. Digital media allow sentence spacing variations not possible with the typewriter. Most digital fonts permit the use of a variable space or a no-break space. Some modern font specifications, such as OpenType
, have the ability to automatically add or reduce space after punctuation, and users may be able to choose sentence spacing variations. Modern fonts that allow spacing variations will allow the average user the ability to easily manipulate the following spaces: non-breaking short spaces (thin spaces), non-breaking normal spaces (thick spaces), breaking normal spaces (thick spaces), and breaking long spaces (em spaces).
The use of shortcuts while using digital media, such as texting, has resulted in a change to sentence spacing techniques for some. According to Lynne Truss
, "Young people ... are now accustomed to following a full stop with a lower-case letter and no space."
treats horizontal runs of whitespace as a single space, but uses a heuristic
to recognize sentence endings—typesetting the spaces after them slightly wider than a normal space. This is the default for Tex, although the "\frenchspacing" TeX macro will disable this feature in favor of a standard word space between sentences.
Computer word processor
s will allow the user to input as many spaces as desired. Although the default setting for many application's grammar-checkers (e.g. Microsoft Word
) is single sentence spacing, they can be adjusted to recognize double sentence spacing as "correct" also. A program called PerfectIt is an "MS Word add-in that helps professionals to proofread faster". The producer states that a feature was added to the most recent version of their program (as of August 2009), "to convert two spaces at the end of a sentence into one", but they have "never had any requests to convert one space into two".
Some computer text editors, such as Emacs
and vi
, originally relied on double-spacing to recognize sentence boundaries. By default, Emacs will not break a line at a single space preceded by a period, but this behavior is configurable (with the option sentence-end-double-space). There are also functions to move the cursor forward or backward to the next double-space in the text. In Vim
the joinspaces setting indicates whether extra spaces are inserted when joining lines together. The GNU Coding Standards
recommend using two spaces when coding comments. The optional Emacs mode LaTeX provides a toggling option French-LaTeX-mode which, if set to French, creates single sentence spacing after terminal punctuation.
s follow the HTML
display specification and for programmers' convenience ignore runs of white space
when displaying them. In order to force a web browser to display multiple spaces, a special character sequence must be used (such as "
followed by a thin space, "
, or "
and additional unwanted spaces or line break
s in the text in certain programs.
and similar early character encodings provide only a single space, which is breaking and fixed-width (the particular width specified by the respective font). EBCDIC
, although earlier than ASCII, provided a breaking fixed-width space (SP), a non-breaking fixed-width space (RSP: "Required SPace"), and an alternate-width non-breaking fixed-width space intended for use in numeric lists with fixed-width (but not necessarily em-width) digits (NSP: "Numeric SPace"). HTML
and Unicode
can both record runs of consecutive spaces—including multiple-width spaces, and breaking and non-breaking spaces. HTML provides four variations on space width and one fixed-width non-breaking space: <space>,  ,  , and   (all breaking); and (non-breaking). In a typewriter font, <space> will equal  , but will vary according to the font designer's specification in all other fonts, whether proportional or monospace. The HTML standard also specifies display behavior, not just character encoding, so web browsers following the HTML standard will collapse multiple <space>s to a single <space>. Non-browser applications that use HTML encoding will not necessarily behave this way at display-time, e.g. later versions of Microsoft Word. Unicode provides 15 variations on space width and breakability, including: THIN SPACE   and NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE  . The following examples demonstrate the effect of these variations on a web browser—using space before punctuation to illustrate identical possible spacing variations following terminal punctuation. These spacing variations, combined with a standard word space, enable users to create custom sentence spacing—as alternatives to a single or double standard word space.
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
, have the ability to automatically add or reduce space after punctuation, and users may be able to choose sentence spacing variations. Modern fonts that allow spacing variations will allow the average user the ability to easily manipulate the following spaces: non-breaking short spaces (thin spaces), non-breaking normal spaces (thick spaces), breaking normal spaces (thick spaces), and breaking long spaces (em spaces).
The use of shortcuts while using digital media, such as texting, has resulted in a change to sentence spacing techniques for some. According to Lynne Truss
Lynne Truss
Lynne Truss is an English writer and journalist, best known for her popular book Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.-Early life:...
, "Young people ... are now accustomed to following a full stop with a lower-case letter and no space."
Word processors and text input programs
The typesetting software TeXTeX
TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....
treats horizontal runs of whitespace as a single space, but uses a heuristic
Heuristic
Heuristic refers to experience-based techniques for problem solving, learning, and discovery. Heuristic methods are used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution, where an exhaustive search is impractical...
to recognize sentence endings—typesetting the spaces after them slightly wider than a normal space. This is the default for Tex, although the "\frenchspacing" TeX macro will disable this feature in favor of a standard word space between sentences.
Computer word processor
Word processor
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
s will allow the user to input as many spaces as desired. Although the default setting for many application's grammar-checkers (e.g. Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
) is single sentence spacing, they can be adjusted to recognize double sentence spacing as "correct" also. A program called PerfectIt is an "MS Word add-in that helps professionals to proofread faster". The producer states that a feature was added to the most recent version of their program (as of August 2009), "to convert two spaces at the end of a sentence into one", but they have "never had any requests to convert one space into two".
Some computer text editors, such as Emacs
Emacs
Emacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...
and vi
Vi
vi is a screen-oriented text editor originally created for the Unix operating system. The portable subset of the behavior of vi and programs based on it, and the ex editor language supported within these programs, is described by the Single Unix Specification and POSIX.The original code for vi...
, originally relied on double-spacing to recognize sentence boundaries. By default, Emacs will not break a line at a single space preceded by a period, but this behavior is configurable (with the option sentence-end-double-space). There are also functions to move the cursor forward or backward to the next double-space in the text. In Vim
Vim (text editor)
Vim is a text editor written by Bram Moolenaar and first released publicly in 1991. Based on the vi editor common to Unix-like systems, Vim is designed for use both from a command line interface and as a standalone application in a graphical user interface...
the joinspaces setting indicates whether extra spaces are inserted when joining lines together. The GNU Coding Standards
GNU Coding Standards
The GNU Coding Standards are a set of rules and guidelines for writing programs that work consistently within the GNU system. The GNU Coding Standards were written by Richard Stallman and other GNU Project volunteers. The standards document is part of the GNU Project and is available from the GNU...
recommend using two spaces when coding comments. The optional Emacs mode LaTeX provides a toggling option French-LaTeX-mode which, if set to French, creates single sentence spacing after terminal punctuation.
Web browsers
Web browserWeb browser
A web browser is a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing information resources on the World Wide Web. An information resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier and may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of content...
s follow the HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
display specification and for programmers' convenience ignore runs of white space
Whitespace (computer science)
In computer science, whitespace is any single character or series of characters that represents horizontal or vertical space in typography. When rendered, a whitespace character does not correspond to a visual mark, but typically does occupy an area on a page...
when displaying them. In order to force a web browser to display multiple spaces, a special character sequence must be used (such as "
  " for an en-spaceEn (typography)
An en is a typographic unit, half of the width of an em. By definition, it is equivalent to half of the height of the font . As its name suggests, it is also traditionally the width of a lowercase letter "n"....
followed by a thin space, "
 " for an em-spaceEm (typography)
An em is a unit of measurement in the field of typography, equal to the currently specified point size.The name of em is related to M. Originally the unit was derived from the width of the capital "M" in the given typeface....
, or "
Non-breaking spaceIn computer-based text processing and digital typesetting, a non-breaking space or no-break space is a variant of the space character that prevents an automatic line break at its position. In certain formats , it also prevents the “collapsing” of multiple consecutive whitespace characters into a...
" for two successive full spaces). However, using a non-breaking space can lead to uneven justified textJustification (typesetting)
In typesetting, justification is the typographic alignment setting of text or images within a column or "measure" to align along both the left and right margin...
and additional unwanted spaces or line break
Soft return
In word processing and text-oriented markup languages the term soft return can mean a line break due to word wrapping. Alternatively it can mean a stored line break that is not a paragraph break. For example, it is common to print postal addresses in a multiple-line format, but the several lines...
s in the text in certain programs.
Character encodings
ASCIIASCII
The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...
and similar early character encodings provide only a single space, which is breaking and fixed-width (the particular width specified by the respective font). EBCDIC
EBCDIC
Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code is an 8-bit character encoding used mainly on IBM mainframe and IBM midrange computer operating systems....
, although earlier than ASCII, provided a breaking fixed-width space (SP), a non-breaking fixed-width space (RSP: "Required SPace"), and an alternate-width non-breaking fixed-width space intended for use in numeric lists with fixed-width (but not necessarily em-width) digits (NSP: "Numeric SPace"). HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
and Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
can both record runs of consecutive spaces—including multiple-width spaces, and breaking and non-breaking spaces. HTML provides four variations on space width and one fixed-width non-breaking space: <space>,  ,  , and   (all breaking); and (non-breaking). In a typewriter font, <space> will equal  , but will vary according to the font designer's specification in all other fonts, whether proportional or monospace. The HTML standard also specifies display behavior, not just character encoding, so web browsers following the HTML standard will collapse multiple <space>s to a single <space>. Non-browser applications that use HTML encoding will not necessarily behave this way at display-time, e.g. later versions of Microsoft Word. Unicode provides 15 variations on space width and breakability, including: THIN SPACE   and NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE  . The following examples demonstrate the effect of these variations on a web browser—using space before punctuation to illustrate identical possible spacing variations following terminal punctuation. These spacing variations, combined with a standard word space, enable users to create custom sentence spacing—as alternatives to a single or double standard word space.
- No space before the exclamation mark!
- A no-break space before the exclamation mark !
- A THIN SPACE (
 ) before the exclamation mark!
- A NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE (
 ) before the exclamation mark!
- A small-formatted no-break space before the exclamation mark !
See also
- History of sentence spacingHistory of sentence spacingThe history of sentence spacing is the evolution of sentence spacing conventions from the introduction of movable type in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg to the present day....
- PunctuationPunctuationPunctuation marks are symbols that indicate the structure and organization of written language, as well as intonation and pauses to be observed when reading aloud.In written English, punctuation is vital to disambiguate the meaning of sentences...
- Sentence spacing
- Sentence spacing in language and style guidesSentence spacing in language and style guidesSentence spacing guidance is provided in many language and style guides. The majority of style guides that use a Latin-derived alphabet as a language base prescribe or recommend the use of a single space after the concluding punctuation of a sentence in final written works and publications...
- Sentence spacing studiesSentence spacing studiesSentence spacing studies analyse the effects of sentence spacing techniques on the readability of text. The only direct scientific studies have been conducted by researchers from the University of Georgia, for on-screen text...
- Orphans and widows
- TypographyTypographyTypography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...