You can see the original discussion, on the www-talk mailing list in July 1993 [1]. In the thread "Space after Periods," Terry Allen (an editor at O'Reilly) advocated for rendering more space after a period that closes a sentence than after a period that marks an abbreviation (in keeping with TeX and troff conventions).
I proposed that, "A WWW document (which uses proportional fonts) should have the same space between sentences as between words" and cited as authority "Words into Type" and the "Chicago Manual of Style." in 1993, "WIT" and "Chicago" set standards for publishing much like RFCs do for the Internet.
Terry Allen and I engaged in some snarky backbiting, then Ken Chang of NCSA Publications said he preferred "'one space fits all' as writers of HTML really shouldn't need to know the fineries of typography" and finally Guido van Rossum complained that, "extra space after a sentence... is mostly propaganda by Knuth and Kernighan (TeX and troff)" and implored, "Let's keep HTML simple!"
If you don't like the way that browsers collapse spaces between sentences, you can blame me (and Ken Chang plus Guido van Rossum who clearly had issues with whitespace beyond Python).
[1] http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www-talk.1993q3/index.h...
This convention started with typewriters, and typesetters (e.g. my parents) will tell you that it is only considered correct in monospace fonts. This is also why HTML takes the liberty of reducing whitespace down to a single space character unless you go out of your way to use an .
People like to say that but it's never been explained to my satisfaction. Spaces are twice as wide in a monospace font. Why would you use more spaces when and only when you have a longer space?
I've also wondered this. Referring to this mock-up[1], I have the same monospace text with single vs double spaces after sentences, and proportional font with single vs double. The usual argument is that #2 is better than #1 (for mono), but #3 is better than #4 (for proportional). It feels like an inconsistency in the preference, and (as you pointed out) the reasoning doesn't make sense.
No, an em-width space between sentences with either half-em or third-em width space between words was typesettig convention for a long time before typewriters, and is where the triple (later double) spacing in typewritten manuscript convention came from.
Typesetting convention evolved to narrower and eventually mostly settled on equal-to-interword spacing after that typewriter convention evolved from earlier typesetting convention.
In short, wider sentence spacing goes back to the first English standards of the eighteenth century – including the first nine editions of the Chicago Manual of Style, and even the tenth still had it as an en-space – and only really started falling out of favour in the twenties. Typewriters had limited effect, but the automated typesetters that suceeded them were actually what killed it off, to simplify the programming.
I typically do still type a single space, but I take full advantage of my preferred TeX flavour's (ConTeXt) automatic conversion to wider spaces. One successful, post-education convert here!
EDIT: For completeness, here is that same text with an extra space: "I live in the U.S. I am happy." -- see how much easier that is to read? Sure, it's not that big a deal, but it's definitely kind to the reader.
I live in the U.S. I am happy.
I live in the U.S. I am happy.Full stops aren't generally used in abbreviations here, Mx Cryptonector.
Though there's a more recent trend to write "Nato" rather than NATO, which annoys me for the inconsistency that arises. Plenty of people pronounce VAT as one word, or PAYE, but these are usually left in capitals.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/guardian-observer-style-guide-a
https://forlang.wsu.edu/help-pages/help-pages-keyboards-os-x...
The newer system is simply holding down keys to see accented variants which feels very natural on touchscreen devices but is slower than keyboard shortcuts if you know them.
(XKB manages to be both over-complicated and under-capable.)
It's fairly common for a lot of computer software to standardize on American English and American conventions, yet several of these are unique to under 1% of the world's population. This morning, a new installation of Microsoft Outlook asked for a location and timezone, yet still showed the weather for Washington DC in Fahrenheit above the calendar. The weather location was easily changed, but not the units. A well-known messaging app I installed last week shows my location as "K%©benhavn", for someone in Russia no character in the location is intelligible. A receipt from a restaurant in Europe has only about a 95% chance of correctly showing €, and maybe a 1/50 chance of showing the date in the wrong order. On an international flight between two non-English places, it's fairly common for the in-flight display to show miles and Fahrenheit with English, which I don't understand, and kilometres and Celsius with (say) Arabic, which I can't understand either — along with the other 99% of non-American connecting passengers.
I have no issue with the minor spelling differences and changes of idiom.
So yes, we mostly understand the Americans, except their measuring units and paper sizes.
> The same should go the other way around.
But it often doesn't.
> setxkbmap -option compose:menu
For example. There will be a dialog somewhere too.
In Ubuntu Unity and — I think — Gnome Shell:
Keyboard settings » Shortcuts » Typing » Compose key
Even specially enabling it is a real barrier in many ways.
While we're on this subject, wide spacing between sentence-ending periods and the next sentence is the Right Way (tm). In ASCII that's two spaces. We're not animals. Let's behave accordingly.