Hi all, to be honest, I'm very surprised about this discussion, as I am living, writing and designing (mostly with scribus since 1.2.1) in a continental European tradition (Germany). We have always been told that using two empty spaces after a full stop is a big Nono.
This is not meant to offend anyone, to be sure, but two empty spaces would simply look ugly to me. Probably this has to do with customs, but I think it's quite telling that LyX doesn't allow double empty spaces. My overall impression is that US-American typography as of today is more conservative and more deeply rooted in Anglo-Saxon tradition than any other national or regional typography in the world. That's not necessarily bad, and I'm quite conservative myself with respect to typography. But I think one can get rid of a lot of problems by using generally accepted rules. I read US-American publications more than once and I see lots of different usages of empty spaces. And I also see em dash disappearing as it is in Europe, Canada or Oceania. The same goes for the typesetting of numbers: 10 000 looks much better than 10.000 or 10,000. It's a matter of aesthetics, which has the neat side effect of circumventing Anglo-Saxon/Continental European differences. Unfortunately, this won't help you, when you're dealing with corporate bean counters, who insist on displaying their numbers "correctly" (sigh!). Finally, I would like to place a request for Gregory Pittman to stop his mimicry and to sign with his real name. Greg, you did nothing wrong. You contribute more than I do. I really hope the "Greg" sig will appear on the list again soon. Christoph
