Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by UI_at_80x24 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

UI_at_80x24·

No it is not a mistake. It is not fashionable in digital media thanks I believe to twitters character limits.

Look at any printed media from the last 100 years. Printing presses, books, magazines, newspaper.

A double space offers a visual clue where a 'mental breath' takes place.

View on HN

It's true that the space between sentences should be larger than the space between words, as it is in properly typeset text, though not twice as large. Using two spaces is a way to approximate that when you only have monospaced fonts. It's no longer encouraged in electronic text when using proportional fonts because the rendering software _should_ adjust the spacing itself.

edit: monospaced, not proportional.

It "should" adjust, but in practice most software do not render spaces after periods properly. There is no in band signal to distinguish periods for sentence ends vs e.g. Mr. Thus there is a clear argument for double spacing in all contexts

> Look at any printed media from the last 100 years.

I have, and it contradicts your point. The single space is the nearly universal standard in modern print media.

It doesn’t make sense for monospaced to me, because the overly wide period character already creates additional breathing room.

It's not because of twitter character limits, it's because browsers collapse multiple consecutive spaces in html when they render text.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com