Lindsay, >that Latin used to be written without spaces, and the practice was >defended by Cassian (?) who said that slowing the reader down meant more >meditation and thus more opportunity for the glorification of god. The >idea of forcing people to read slowly is interesting - we all know that >we miss the
I think the issue was one of economics. Paper was expensive and lack of spaces allowed more words on the page. Spaces were added between words to increase the user friendlyness of the written word (the invention of print meant that less educated people were buying books and had trouble figuring out where the words started/ended; the academics of the day were appalled that commercial demands, ie wanting to sell more books, meant they had to read text containing spaces). The written form of many languages does not contain spaces. Check out: "Adding Spaces to Thai and English: Effects on Reading" available from: www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk/staff/Fernand.Gobet/ papers/Cogsci'97-thai.ps and for a software development perspective there is always sentence 763, available from that well known site: www.knosof.co.uk/cbook/cbook.html derek -- Derek M Jones tel: +44 (0) 1252 520 667 Knowledge Software Ltd mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Applications Standards Conformance Testing http://www.knosof.co.uk ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
