> The term "French Spacing" is used for two spaces after a period ending > a sentence, for those wishing to do more research. I have not found > any authoritative answer.
This phrase sounded to me like one of the slurs the English invented during their various wars with the Dutch and the French (e.g. "Dutch courage"), so I looked into it a bit. The practice of double-spacing after a period was standard even with proportional fonts before the advent of the Linotype machine, the mechanical design of which didn't accommodate it. See http://webword.com/reports/period.html. ``If the [Linotype machine] operator typed two spaces in a row, you had two wedges next to each other, and that tended to gum up the operation. Clients who insisted could be accommodated by typing an en-space followed by a justifier-space, but printers charged extra for it and ridiculed it as 'French Spacing, oo-la-la, you want it all fancy, huh? Well it'll cost ya, bub, and plenty too...' and soon it became unfashionable in the US.'' Bill _______________________________________________ Python-Dev mailing list Python-Dev@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com
