I used GNU typist when I taught myself touch typing with a Das Keyboard back in the day.
One thing I found annoying was that it insisted on two spaces after a period. I found that annoying so I replaces ". " with ". " in all tutorial files.
One thing I found annoying was that it insisted on two spaces after a period. I found that annoying so I replaces ". " with ". " in all tutorial files.
GNU Emacs' manual has a good explanation:
The sentence commands assume that you follow the American typist's convention of putting two spaces at the end of a sentence. It is useful to follow this convention, because it allows the Emacs sentence commands to distinguish between periods that end a sentence and periods that indicate abbreviations.
(setq sentence-end-double-space nil)I've adopted the convention myself, because of the utility. It isn't typographically sound, but typing is not typography.
Why not? In speech, pauses between sentences are longer than pauses between words... I've never understood this debate.
But then, I'm the kind of guy who will write prose like
> He shouted, "Watch out!".
... with duplicated punctuation inside the quotation marks (because they carry meaning and are part of the quotation), so clearly I don't know the MLA or whatever.
That is to say, typographers don't typeset books, newspapers, or magazine with double-spacing after a sentence.
It's a style that emerged from typewriting, because it makes it easier to read monospaced text.
Which is another reason I do it, I'm usually typing in a mono font even when I'm working on prose. That was my point, actually.
Amusingly, the two sentences in the above paragraph have two spaces between them, as do this and the next. But you won't see it, because browsers typeset with one space between sentences.
As usual, Wikipedia has a lengthy article on the practice, which dates back to Gutenberg.