Re: End-of-sentence spacing, for our German readers

[John A.]

On 2021-01-14, Ulrich Lauther wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 06:01:33AM +, Dorai Sitaram via wrote:
>>  I'm used to single-spacing by now, given its ubiquity, but surely the 
>> Germans carry their disdain for typographic breathing space a little too 
>> far? As in the posted article, paragraphs are difficult to visually 
>> separate, lacking as they do both leading horizontal indentation and 
>> vertical separation. 
> 
> Did you realize that the posted article was a joke, a piece of humor?

Although I'd imagine that the lack of visual paragraph separation in the
article wasn't part of the joke, and that what Dorai himself said was
somewhat of a joke.

Best regards
John

Re: End-of-sentence spacing, for our German readers

[Ulrich Lauther]

On Thu, Jan 14, 2021 at 06:01:33AM +, Dorai Sitaram via wrote:
>  I'm used to single-spacing by now, given its ubiquity, but surely the 
> Germans carry their disdain for typographic breathing space a little too far? 
> As in the posted article, paragraphs are difficult to visually separate, 
> lacking as they do both leading horizontal indentation and vertical 
> separation. 

Did you realize that the posted article was a joke, a piece of humor?

Best,

ulrich

Re: End-of-sentence spacing, for our German readers

[Dorai Sitaram via]

 I'm used to single-spacing by now, given its ubiquity, but surely the Germans 
carry their disdain for typographic breathing space a little too far? As in the 
posted article, paragraphs are difficult to visually separate, lacking as they 
do both leading horizontal indentation and vertical separation. (The one 
fragile clue that a paragraph has ended is that its last line MAY not reach all 
the way to the right margin. But every now and then it will by the laws of 
probability, and the reader is sunk.)

Add to this the longcompoundwordswithouthyphens, and the whole thing is only an 
epsilon away from scriptio continua. No wonder Th. Mann said the hell with it 
and wrote chapter-sized paragraphs.

--d
 On Wednesday, January 13, 2021, 10:51:06 PM EST, Ulrich Lauther 
 wrote:  
 
 On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 01:16:54PM -0500, Peter Schaffter wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2020, Ulrich Lauther wrote:
> > On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 10:27:01AM +, Dorai Sitaram wrote:
> > > groff pretty much forces one to use two spaces after
> > > sentence-ending punctuation, unless it's at the end of a source
> > > line.
> > 
> > In my opinion it is good style to start every sentence on a new
> > source line.
> 
  

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Damian McGuckin]

On Thu, 7 Jan 2021, John A. wrote:


 Make lines short, and break lines at natural places, such as after
 commas and semicolons, rather than randomly.


I've been an avid sentence-line-breaker before, but I've now started to 
apply Kernigan's method, and it is very liberating, and much easier to 
edit.


I was taught that approach in the late 70s and have been educating others 
(who work for/with me) along these lines ever since.


It really is excellent advice.

Stay safe - Damian

Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW 2037
Ph:+61-2-8571-0847 .. Fx:+61-2-9692-9623 | unsolicited email not wanted here
Views & opinions here are mine and not those of any past or present employer

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[John A.]

Karthik Suresh (2020-12-20) dixit:

[...] Start each sentence on a new line.
Make lines short, and break lines at natural places, such as after
commas and semicolons, rather than randomly. Since most people change
documents by rewriting phrases and adding, deleting and rearranging
sentences, these precautions simplify any editing you have to do later.

 — Brian W. Kernighan, 1974


I just wanted to thank you for sharing this!

I've been an avid sentence-line-breaker before, but I've now started to 
apply Kernigan's method, and it is very liberating, and much easier to edit.


Best regards
John

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[G. Branden Robinson]

Hi, Doug!

At 2020-12-22T09:33:20-0500, M Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> The words about double spacing quoted below can be misread as
> unconditional advice. I suggest replacing "In" with "In this case".
> 
> Also so much mention of AT strikes me as clutter. At least the first
> instance would better be dropped.
> 
> "If a second argument is never given to the 'ss' request, GNU 'troff'
> separates sentences as AT 'troff' does.  In input to GNU 'troff', as
> with AT 'troff', a sentence should always be followed by either a
> newline or two spaces."

I ended up eliminating that entire paragraph, as it is now redundant
with other, earlier, material in our Texinfo manual.

The second sentence is anticipated by node "Sentences":

...when GNU @code{troff} encounters one of these
[end-of-sentence] characters at the end of a line, or one of
them is followed by two or more spaces on the same input line,
it appends a normal space followed by an inter-sentence space in
the formatted output.

The first sentence is anticipated earlier in the same node:

The optional second argument sets the amount of additional space
separating sentences on the same output line in fill mode.  If
the second argument is omitted,
@var{additional-sentence-space-size} is set to
@var{word-space-size}.

I also eliminated the paragraph from groff_diff(7); describing how groff
_isn't_ different from AT troff isn't in the page's charter--neither
is general advice on good input conventions.

Regards,
Branden


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Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Dave Kemper]

On 12/22/20, Peter Schaffter  wrote:
> So, yes, it's worth re-working the info .ss entry.  Perhaps begin
> with something like: "Change the size of the space between words
> and sentences.  The space between sentences is derived by adding
> WORD_SPACE_SIZE and SENTENCE_SPACE_SIZE.  Thus '.ss 12 0' results in
> no additional space being added between sentences, whereas '.ss 12 12'
> results in an additional 12 units of space between sentences."

It seems like a lot of clarity could be achieved by just not naming
the second parameter something misleading like SENTENCE_SPACE_SIZE.
There's a lack of parity between WORD_SPACE_SIZE, which does specify
the width of a word space, and SENTENCE_SPACE_SIZE, which does not
specify the width of a sentence space.

A name like SENTENCE_SPACE_ADDITION or
ADDITIONAL_SPACE_BETWEEN_SENTENCES makes it clear that the parameter
is not specifying the size of a sentence space on its own.  (Neither
of those names is very good, but you get the idea and can maybe come
up with something better.)  This could allow the first paragraph to
not need the explicit examples Peter proposes above, allowing it to
focus more on the request's high-level overview.

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Peter Schaffter]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020, John Gardner wrote:
> I condemn two spaces, period.

Having gotten bitten by the who-says-what-where bug concerning
double-spaced sentences, I re-read my own documentation for the .SS
macro in mom.  Seems to me I covered all the bases:

 "Typeset copy should never have two spaces between sentences, and
  the "zero" argument [to .SS] tells groff to give the extra spaces
  no space at all (effectively removing them).  Therefore, if you
  double-space your sentences (as you should when writing in a text
  editor), get in the habit of putting

.SS 0

  at the top of your files.

  If you do use SS for something other than ensuring that you don’t
  get unwanted sentence spaces in output copy, you can set or reset
  the sentence space to the groff default (the same width as a word
  space, ie double-spaced input sentences will appear double-spaced on
  output as well) with

.SS DEFAULT

  If you’re using the document processing macros and your PRINTSTYLE
  is TYPEWRITE, .SS DEFAULT is the default, because you do want
  double spaces between sentences in copy that imitates the look of a
  typewritten document."


-- 
Peter Schaffter
https://www.schaffter.ca

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Peter Schaffter]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020, Dave Kemper wrote:
> It seemed a minor thing before, but now that it's tripped up the
> author of possibly the most elaborate macro package published in
> the roff language's 50-year history, I wonder if that's worth
> revisiting.

Being said author, I can confirm that yes, I did indeed get tripped
up in exactly the way Dave described: quick check of paragraph one
to refresh my memory, not reading under the fold, forgetting that
sentence space means additional space.  I obviously knew once or mom
wouldn't have macros for manipulating word and sentence spacing,
but it's something I haven't had to think about in years.

That said, while the info entry for .ss is accurate as is, the
material does need to be re-ordered somewhat.  First off, a reader
of the entry, looking for information on sentence spacing, and
rationally assuming 'ss' stands for 'sentence space,' is presented,
surprisingly, with "Change the size of a space between *words.*"

Then, because of the capitalization of the argument descriptions,
the eye tends to jump to: "Initially both the WORD_SPACE_SIZE
and SENTENCE_SPACE_SIZE are 12," which, without some explanation
of sentence space, leads to the conclusion that the value of
sentence_space_size is discrete.  The erroneous conclusion
then appears to be confirmed in the second paragraph:  "If the
second argument is not given, sentence space size is set to
WORD_SPACE_SIZE," which, as before, suggests "is equal to," not
"is added to", word space size.

So, yes, it's worth re-working the info .ss entry.  Perhaps begin
with something like: "Change the size of the space between words
and sentences.  The space between sentences is derived by adding
WORD_SPACE_SIZE and SENTENCE_SPACE_SIZE.  Thus '.ss 12 0' results in
no additional space being added between sentences, whereas '.ss 12 12'
results in an additional 12 units of space between sentences."

-- 
Peter Schaffter
https://www.schaffter.ca

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[James K. Lowden]

On Tue, 22 Dec 2020 16:21:35 +1100
"G. Branden Robinson"  wrote:

> If a second argument is never given to the 'ss' request, GNU
>  'troff' separates sentences as AT 'troff' does.  

I think "never" is a long time.  Would this be better?

If a second argument is not provided to the 'ss' request

--jkl

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[M Douglas McIlroy]

The words about double spacing quoted below can be misread as unconditional
advice. I suggest replacing "In" with "In this case".

Also so much mention of AT strikes me as clutter. At least the first
instance would better be dropped.

"If a second argument is never given to the 'ss' request, GNU 'troff'
separates sentences as AT 'troff' does.  In input to GNU 'troff', as with
AT 'troff', a sentence should always be followed by either a newline or
two spaces."

Doug

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[John Gardner]

>
> It was neither the only, first, last, or most vituperous critique of Two
> Spaces: There has been a rising tide of condemnation of the practice in the
> media, as shown by Googling "two spaces after period".
>

I condemn two spaces, period.

Worst\. Indentation style\. Ever.

On Tue, 22 Dec 2020 at 09:45, Dave Kemper  wrote:

> On 12/20/20, Dorai Sitaram via  wrote:
> > It was neither the only, first, last, or most vituperous critique of Two
> > Spaces: There has been a rising tide of condemnation of the practice in
> the
> > media, as shown by Googling "two spaces after period".
>
> As a general rule, you can gauge how seriously to take someone's
> critique of any topic by calculating the ratio of the topic's relative
> importance in the world to the commenter's level of vituperousness.
> The more shrilly someone rails against something of such little
> consequence, the more safely you can ignore them. :-)
>
> You'll also observe that a lot of opinionated people fail to
> distinguish between input convention and typesetting (probably trained
> by Word that these aren't separate topics), or misrepresent the
> history of the practice (often with variations on the demonstrably
> false claim that wider sentence spacing originated with typewriters
> and/or monospace typefaces).
>
>

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Dave Kemper]

On 12/21/20, G. Branden Robinson  wrote:
> I thought you and I worked to fix this earlier this year?

We did do some work in this section, but I don't recall addressing
this terminology in particular.  At the time, it seemed pretty small
potatoes.

Taken as a whole, I believe the section is perfectly clear.  The
problem comes in when someone reads only the first paragraph, maybe to
refresh their memory or just get a bird's-eye view of what the request
does.

>  -- Request: .ss word-space-size [sentence-space-size]
>  -- Register: \n[.ss]
>  -- Register: \n[.sss]
>  Set the sizes of spaces between words and sentences.  Their units
>  are twelfths of the space width parameter of the current font.
>  Initially both the WORD-SPACE-SIZE and SENTENCE-SPACE-SIZE are 12.
>  Negative values are not permitted.  The request is ignored if there
>  are no arguments.

Someone familiar with typographic terminology may stop here, thinking
they understand all they need to, but they will be misled by groff's
unconventional use of "sentence space" to mean additional rather than
total space between sentences.

It seemed a minor thing before, but now that it's tripped up the
author of possibly the most elaborate macro package published in the
roff language's 50-year history, I wonder if that's worth revisiting.

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[G. Branden Robinson]

At 2020-12-21T17:07:10-0600, Dave Kemper wrote:
> On 12/20/20, Peter Schaffter  wrote:
> > Perhaps I should have been more verbose and written: According
> > to the info(1) manual, initially both the WORD_SPACE_SIZE and
> > SENTENCE_SPACE_SIZE are 12; since this prevents SS from being larger
> > than WS, it effectively disables sentence spacing.
> 
> Unfortunately, the info manual uses the term "sentence space" not in
> its conventional meaning of "the amount of space between sentences"
> but as "the amount of space to *add* to the word space between
> sentences."  The info manual does spell out this meaning, so there's
> technically no ambiguity, but "sentence space" having a different
> meaning from normal typographic usage seems needlessly confusing.

I thought you and I worked to fix this earlier this year?

Hmm, yes, I see there are some straggling cases remaining, including one
in my recent rewrite of section 5.1.  Sigh.

For the sake of the lurkers and those unfortunate souls who don't run
groff straight out of git HEAD, here's the current discussion of this
topic in the info(1) manual.

I urge anyone who finds the following insufficiently clear to go out in
groff 1.23.0 to speak up.

 -- Request: .ss word-space-size [sentence-space-size]
 -- Register: \n[.ss]
 -- Register: \n[.sss]
 Set the sizes of spaces between words and sentences.  Their units
 are twelfths of the space width parameter of the current font.
 Initially both the WORD-SPACE-SIZE and SENTENCE-SPACE-SIZE are 12.
 Negative values are not permitted.  The request is ignored if there
 are no arguments.

 The first argument, the inter-word space size, is a minimum; if
 automatically adjusted, it may increase.

 The optional second argument sets the amount of additional space
 separating sentences on the same output line in fill mode.  If the
 second argument is omitted, SENTENCE-SPACE-SIZE is set to
 WORD-SPACE-SIZE.

 The read-only registers '.ss' and '.sss' hold the values of minimal
 inter-word space and additional inter-sentence space, respectively.
 These parameters are associated with the current environment (*note
 Environments::), and rounded down to the nearest multiple of 12 on
 terminal output devices.

 Additional inter-sentence spacing is used only in fill mode, and
 only if the output line is not full when the end of a sentence
 occurs in the input.  If a sentence ends at the end of an input
 line, then both an inter-word space and an inter-sentence space are
 added to the output; if two spaces follow the end of a sentence in
 the middle of an input line, then the second space becomes an
 inter-sentence space in the output.  Additional inter-sentence
 space is not adjusted, but the inter-word space that always
 precedes it may be.  Further input spaces after the second, if
 present, are adjusted as normal.

 If a second argument is never given to the 'ss' request, GNU
 'troff' separates sentences as AT 'troff' does.  In input to GNU
 'troff', as with AT 'troff', a sentence should always be followed
 by either a newline or two spaces.

 A related application of the 'ss' request is to insert discardable
 horizontal space; i.e., space that is discarded at a line break.
 For example, some footnote styles collect the notes into a single
 paragraph with large spaces between each.

  .ie n .ll 50n
  .el   .ll 2.75i
  .ss 12 48
  1. J. Fict. Ch. Soc. 6 (2020), 3\[en]14.
  2. Better known for other work.

 The result has obvious inter-sentence spacing.

  1. J. Fict. Ch. Soc. 6 (2020), 3-14. 2. Better
  known for other work.

 If _undiscardable_ space is required, use the '\h' escape.

Regards,
Branden


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Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[M Douglas McIlroy]

  > According to the info(1) manual, initially both the WORD_SPACE_SIZE and
  > SENTENCE_SPACE_SIZE are 12; since this prevents SS from being larger
  > than WS, it effectively disables sentence spacing

A careful reading reveals that the second argument of .ss is *extra*
spacing, so
the default is two spaces. It has a glaring effect in  proportionally
spaced text.

Doug

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Peter Schaffter]

On Tue, Dec 22, 2020, Tadziu Hoffmann wrote:
> For those who have not read it yet: the original
> 
>   http://www.heracliteanriver.com/?p=324
> 
> has unfortunately vanished, but I have saved a copy:
> 
>   http://www.usm.uni-muenchen.de/~hoffmann/roff/tmp/typographyspacing.pdf

Thank you!  I hadn't read it, and I loved it.  Basically, everything
that was passed on to me when I apprenticed as a typesetter in a
commercial shop lo, these many years ago: paragraph text benefits
from sentences with a little more space between them than between
words (the full em was considered a bit too old school).  The amount
of space was related to font, size, leading, and line length.

When we switched to phototypesetting on Compugraphic 8400s (anybody
remember those beautiful beasts?), we used the search/replace
function to add "kern units" to spaces after EOS characters to
achieve the effect.  We'd do it in one pass, then give the galleys to
the proofreader to catch the sentences beginning with capital T, V,
W, or Y, which either needed no extra space or had to be brought
back a tad.  (There's something single-spacers never seem worried
about, despite the obvious holes: tightening period-space-T/V/W/Y
combinations.  They could at least be consistent in their hatred of
unequal word/sentence spacing!)

-- 
Peter Schaffter
https://www.schaffter.ca

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Tadziu Hoffmann]

> [...] at least it felt like I was being individually targeted,
> so I promptly wilted. I mean of course the famous
> 
> https://slate.com/technology/2011/01/two-spaces-after-a-period-why-you-should-never-ever-do-it.html

For those who have not read it yet: the original

  http://www.heracliteanriver.com/?p=324

has unfortunately vanished, but I have saved a copy:

  http://www.usm.uni-muenchen.de/~hoffmann/roff/tmp/typographyspacing.pdf

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Dave Kemper]

On 12/20/20, Peter Schaffter  wrote:
> Perhaps I should have been more verbose and written: According
> to the info(1) manual, initially both the WORD_SPACE_SIZE and
> SENTENCE_SPACE_SIZE are 12; since this prevents SS from being larger
> than WS, it effectively disables sentence spacing.

Unfortunately, the info manual uses the term "sentence space" not in
its conventional meaning of "the amount of space between sentences"
but as "the amount of space to *add* to the word space between
sentences."  The info manual does spell out this meaning, so there's
technically no ambiguity, but "sentence space" having a different
meaning from normal typographic usage seems needlessly confusing.
(I'm not sure where this unconventional usage originates; probably not
as far back as CSTR #54, since in those days .ss didn't have a second
parameter.  It might be a groff-ism, thus something we could fix
without breaking semantic compatibility.)

Thus the way to make sentence spaces the same size as word spaces is
".ss 12 0".  Groff's default of ".ss 12 12" separates sentences by
twice as much space as words (or, in fill mode, by *at most* twice as
much space, since word spaces are stretchable but sentence spaces are
not, a(n undocumented) situation http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?58450
seeks to remedy).

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Peter Schaffter]

On Sun, Dec 20, 2020, Dorai Sitaram via wrote:
>  I'm not completely sure it's true for all modern applications,
>  but I hope you're right that it doesn't hurt in general to
>  explicitly type two spaces after a sentence.  As a dinosaur,
>  that's what I used to do, but trained myself out of it after
>  reading a high-profile tirade scolding me (at least it felt like
>  I was being individually targeted, so I promptly wilted).  I mean
>  of course the famous
>
> https://slate.com/technology/2011/01/two-spaces-after-a-period-why-you-should-never-ever-do-it.html

The article addresses itself to the use of two spaces after a
sentence *in typeset copy*, i.e. copy that uses proportional fonts,
which is indeed frowned upon.  How one enters monospaced text at the
screen or on a typewriter--yes, people still use typewriters and the
ribbon is still sold--is not covered at all, except to point out an
error that results from conflating the two (putting two spaces in
typeset copy).  In typewriter-style copy, e.g. email, "two spaces
between sentences" has been considered standard for a really long
time.  In my experience, it does make monospaced text easier to
digest.  I reflexively reformat received emails to introduce the
extra space if it's not there.  YMMV.

That said, there is no reason not to introduce a tiny amount of
extra space between sentences in typeset copy.  It depends on the
font.  Those with tall caps in relation to the x-height usually
don't need it, but those with caps that blend into the overall grey
are often improved.  It's a judgment call that requires a practised
eye.

-- 
Peter Schaffter
https://www.schaffter.ca

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Peter Schaffter]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2020, Dave Kemper wrote:
> I think you're confusing starting every sentence on its own line with
> using newlines nowhere *except* between sentences.

You are right.  My distaste for hitting return instead of space
after a period clouded my reading of the advice. :)

> > Furthermore, since groff treats end of sentence characters followed
> > by one space, two spaces, or newlines identically when sentence
> > spacing is disabled (as it is by default),
> 
> That *should* be true, but isn't
> (http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?58500).  Some non-English-language tmac
> files disable wider sentence spacing, and perhaps some macro packages,
> but by default groff itself does not.

Perhaps I should have been more verbose and written: According
to the info(1) manual, initially both the WORD_SPACE_SIZE and
SENTENCE_SPACE_SIZE are 12; since this prevents SS from being larger
than WS, it effectively disables sentence spacing.

It just seemed easier to write "disabled by default."

-- 
Peter Schaffter
https://www.schaffter.ca

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Werner LEMBERG]

> I'm not completely sure it's true for all modern applications, but I
> hope you're right that it doesn't hurt in general to explicitly type
> two spaces after a sentence. As a dinosaur, that's what I used to
> do, but trained myself out of it after reading a high-profile tirade
> scolding me (at least it felt like I was being individually
> targeted, so I promptly wilted).  [...]

I always use two spaces after a full sentence – for *input*.  Main
reason are editors like Emacs that use this to identify the end of
sentences, allowing you to move the cursor around sentence-wise.  For
output it's really up to the selected typography style.

On the other hand, there are programs like MS Word that output two
spaces if you enter two spaces, regardless where they are.  I've seen
soo many documents that have uneven spacing within sentences.
Honestly, this bad usage of the program due to incompetent users
completely dwarfs the two-spaces-after-a-full-stop problem...


Werner

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Dorai Sitaram via]

 I'm not completely sure it's true for all modern applications, but I hope 
you're right that it doesn't hurt in general to explicitly type two spaces 
after a sentence. As a dinosaur, that's what I used to do, but trained myself 
out of it after reading a high-profile tirade scolding me (at least it felt 
like I was being individually targeted, so I promptly wilted). I mean of course 
the famous


https://slate.com/technology/2011/01/two-spaces-after-a-period-why-you-should-never-ever-do-it.html


It was neither the only, first, last, or most vituperous critique of Two 
Spaces: There has been a rising tide of condemnation of the practice in the 
media, as shown by Googling "two spaces after period". I am yet to see any 
similarly full-throated defense of it.


But now that I know what's possible, it doesn't matter so much and I don't 
really need to re-train, or re-re-train, myself. I've been able to configure my 
text editor so it will insert the extra space if I missed it, but only for 
groff input. And, no, it's not too difficult to develop a heuristic for when to 
insert that second space. In Vim, for instance,


 %s/\([.?!][’”'")\]]*\) \ wrote:  
 
 On 12/19/20, Dorai Sitaram  wrote:
> groff pretty much forces one to use two spaces after sentence-ending
> punctuation, unless it's at the end of a source line. Is there a way to
> avoid this, so that the space is uniform regardless of whether the ending
> punctuation occurs mid- or end-line?

Using 0 as the second parameter of the .ss request results in the same
space being put between words and between sentences.

> (I could resign myself to always type
> 2 spaces after every sentence, but convention has moved away from this type
> of unergonomic typing, and it's difficult to do it just for groff.)

I'd turn this around, and ask what other applications misbehave if you
type two spaces between sentences?  I type that way across the board
with no noticeable down side.  Developing the habit of typing
everything with two spaces between sentences aids the writing process,
because it's easy to do searches to find sentence boundaries (and some
text editors have keystrokes that recognizes such sentence boundaries
automatically).

If your final copy requires that sentences be separated by only one
space, it's easy to squeeze out the extra space with a simple search
and replace (whereas the opposite is impossible to do with an
algorithm, because so many different punctuation combinations can end
sentences, and algorithms can't always distinguish between a period
ending a sentence and a period indicating an abbreviation).

But you'll probably find that leaving the extra spaces in doesn't
cause any problems, no matter what the application is.  Anything
displayed in HTML will squeeze it out anyway on display.  Other
applications will show it, but what is the down side to that?  In
informal contexts such as email and online chat tools, there almost
certainly is none.  In material that needs to be typeset to modern
convention, where sentences don't get extra space, whatever typesetter
you're using will almost certainly handle this.

  

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Damian McGuckin]

On Sat, 19 Dec 2020, Karthik Suresh wrote:

   First, when you do the purely mechanical operations of typing, type 
so subsequent editing will be easy. Start each sentence on a new line. 
Make lines short, and break lines at natural places, such as after 
commas and semicolons, rather than randomly. Since most people change 
documents by rewriting phrases and adding, deleting and rearranging 
sentences, these precautions simplify any editing you have to do later.


In the 70s, this was the standard advice in the large organization where I 
worked when we moved to DWB for all technical documents, mainly within the 
engineering school. It has worked for me (and other technically focused 
organizations where I have worked since).


That said, we were not writing fiction, well most of us, and I am sure 
that it may not work for everybody.  Some of my own unsophisticated text 
processing tools rely on the fact that a full stop at the end of a line 
(with a few exceptions) so I would find it hard to change now after 40

years.

Regards - Damian

Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW 2037
Ph:+61-2-8571-0847 .. Fx:+61-2-9692-9623 | unsolicited email not wanted here
Views & opinions here are mine and not those of any past or present employer

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Karthik Suresh]

On 19/12/2020 22:36, James K. Lowden wrote:

On Sat, 19 Dec 2020 20:18:19 +
Karthik Suresh  wrote:


I think it's also the advice Brian Kernighan gives about breaking
at natural phrase points in the text as we tend to edit a phrase at a
time.


I hadn't heard that.  Do you know where you read it?



Going back to 1983 is the Unix Documenter’s Workbench that has these 
lines about typing a document:


“First, when you do the purely mechanical operation of typing, type so 
that later editing will be easy. Start each sentence on a new line. Make 
lines short, and break lines at natural places, such as after commas and 
semicolons, rather than randomly. Since most people change documents by 
rewriting phrases and adding, deleting, and rearranging sentences, these 
precautions simplify any editing needed later.”


This approach is also particularly useful if you use ed a lot, which I 
do for writing as it makes editing in a line editor so much easier. For 
example, Kernighan's tutorial to ed uses the following example:


Now is the time
for all good men
to come to the aid of their party.

The article I mentioned in the previous thread, about "semantic 
linefeeds" is the bit that ties this to Kernighan. Extract below.


https://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/

But after an extensive search, I have found an earlier source — and I 
could not be any happier to discover that my inspiration is none other 
than Brian W. Kernighan!


He published “UNIX for Beginners” [PDF] as Bell Labs Technical 
Memorandum 74-1273-18 on 29 October 1974. It describes a far more 
primitive version of the operating system than his more famous and more 
widely available “UNIX for Beginners — Second Edition” from 1978. After 
a long search I have found the lone copy linked above, hosted on an 
obscure Japanese web page about UNIX 6th Edition which has now 
disappeared but can still be viewed on the Internet Archive’s Wayback 
Machine (to which both of the links above point). In the section “Hints 
for Preparing Documents,” Kernighan shares this wisdom:


Hints for Preparing Documents

Most documents go through several versions (always more than you 
expected) before they are finally finished. Accordingly, you should do 
whatever possible to make the job of changing them easy.


First, when you do the purely mechanical operations of typing, type 
so subsequent editing will be easy. Start each sentence on a new line. 
Make lines short, and break lines at natural places, such as after 
commas and semicolons, rather than randomly. Since most people change 
documents by rewriting phrases and adding, deleting and rearranging 
sentences, these precautions simplify any editing you have to do later.


— Brian W. Kernighan, 1974

Karthik

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[James K. Lowden]

On Sat, 19 Dec 2020 20:18:19 +
Karthik Suresh  wrote:

> I think it's also the advice Brian Kernighan gives about breaking
> at natural phrase points in the text as we tend to edit a phrase at a
> time.

I hadn't heard that.  Do you know where you read it?  

A had a college professor who claimed Victor Hugo (I think; it wasn't
yesterday) would write standing up, and shout out each line to make
sure it sounded right.  

Personally, I've never been willing to work that hard.  It might be why
he's famous and I'm not.  

--jkl

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Dave Kemper]

On 12/19/20, Peter Schaffter  wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2020, Ulrich Lauther wrote:
>> In my opinion it is good style to start every sentence on a new
>> source line.
>
> A piece of advice I have been happily ignoring since sometime back
> in the 90s.
...
> This is the the first paragraph of _Bleak House_ typed one screen
> line at a time, no wrap:

I think you're confusing starting every sentence on its own line with
using newlines nowhere *except* between sentences.  Your example
illustrates the latter, which is not how I've ever taken that advice
(in fact it is often accompanied by advice to put line breaks in your
source text after commas and at other logical breaks within
sentences).

> Furthermore, since groff treats end of sentence characters followed
> by one space, two spaces, or newlines identically when sentence
> spacing is disabled (as it is by default),

That *should* be true, but isn't
(http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?58500).  Some non-English-language tmac
files disable wider sentence spacing, and perhaps some macro packages,
but by default groff itself does not.

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Dave Kemper]

On 12/19/20, Dorai Sitaram  wrote:
> groff pretty much forces one to use two spaces after sentence-ending
> punctuation, unless it's at the end of a source line. Is there a way to
> avoid this, so that the space is uniform regardless of whether the ending
> punctuation occurs mid- or end-line?

Using 0 as the second parameter of the .ss request results in the same
space being put between words and between sentences.

> (I could resign myself to always type
> 2 spaces after every sentence, but convention has moved away from this type
> of unergonomic typing, and it's difficult to do it just for groff.)

I'd turn this around, and ask what other applications misbehave if you
type two spaces between sentences?  I type that way across the board
with no noticeable down side.  Developing the habit of typing
everything with two spaces between sentences aids the writing process,
because it's easy to do searches to find sentence boundaries (and some
text editors have keystrokes that recognizes such sentence boundaries
automatically).

If your final copy requires that sentences be separated by only one
space, it's easy to squeeze out the extra space with a simple search
and replace (whereas the opposite is impossible to do with an
algorithm, because so many different punctuation combinations can end
sentences, and algorithms can't always distinguish between a period
ending a sentence and a period indicating an abbreviation).

But you'll probably find that leaving the extra spaces in doesn't
cause any problems, no matter what the application is.  Anything
displayed in HTML will squeeze it out anyway on display.  Other
applications will show it, but what is the down side to that?  In
informal contexts such as email and online chat tools, there almost
certainly is none.  In material that needs to be typeset to modern
convention, where sentences don't get extra space, whatever typesetter
you're using will almost certainly handle this.

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Karthik Suresh]

In my opinion it is good style to start every sentence on a new
source line.


A piece of advice I have been happily ignoring since sometime back
in the 90s.  Certain kinds of texts (scientific, technical) and the
ways they are to be used (e.g. one off, or formatted for multiple media
types and platforms) undeniably benefit from it.  But I simply
cannot compose a work of fiction, or an article, or a rewiew one
screen line at a time.  It is not how one reads (at least not those
of us who grew up reading ink on dead trees), and significantly
interferes with one's ability to assess the meaning and flow of the
text.


I have had the opposite experience with this method for two reasons.

The first reason is that being able to write using this approach and 
then read a formatted text creates a bit of distance between the two 
views - it's almost like reading what I've written for the first time 
and that helps with editing.


The second thing is that if you use in the "right" way, it feels like 
you're writing poetry, and the rhythm of the words carry you along. This 
is what Brandon Rhodes calls "semantic linebreaks" and a few other 
people talk about a similar approach when writing comedy. I think it's 
also the advice Brian Kernighan gives about breaking at natural phrase 
points in the text as we tend to edit a phrase at a time.



This is the the first paragraph of _Bleak House_ typed one screen
line at a time, no wrap:

London.
Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn 
Hall.
Implacable November weather.
As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face 
of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet 
long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.


For example, if I rewrote this paragraph in the way it reads to me and I 
tend to write now:


London.
Michaelmas term lately over,
and the Lord Chancellor
sitting in Lincoln's Inn Hall.
Implacable November weather.
As much mud in the streets
as if the waters had but newly retired
from the face of the earth,
and it would not be wonderful
to meet a Megalosaurus,
forty feet long or so,
waddling like an elephantine lizard
up Holborn Hill.

I feel like it helps with the editing process. Perhaps the Lord 
Chancellor should be standing, looking up or down the hill -
watching for the lizard. I'm not sure where the geography is, between 
where the Chancellor is and Holborn Hill might be but perhaps this kind 
of wrapping might have helped make it clear.


Obviously each to their own, but I don't think the point of the advice 
is about automatic wrapping at a certain level. I take it to be more 
about cadence and flow and rhythm and personally find it very useful in 
my writing.



Karthik

--
Blog 

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Clarke Echols]

I've been using a simple solution successfully for years.

In my own macros I wrote and use, I include the troff/groff provision 
for specifying the end-of-sentence ratio

as follows:   " .ss 12 20"

End-of-sentence identified by two space characters creates a space equal 
to normal space times 1.66.


That way it's easy to see the end-of-space when reading typeset copy 
which is much better for me than
the more commonly used single space the book publication that supposedly 
saves publishers a few pages

by recovering the "wasted" white space.

I ignore the problem and just put a double space at the end of each 
sentence automatically as I type copy,
and I've been doing that since I learned to type in high school my 
senior year back in 1960.


On 12/19/20 3:35 AM, Ulrich Lauther wrote:

On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 10:27:01AM +, Dorai Sitaram wrote:

groff pretty much forces one to use two spaces after sentence-ending 
punctuation, unless it's at the end of a source line.

In my opinion it is good style to start every sentence on a new source line.
This is helpful for editing the text.

Best,

 ulrich



--
Clarke Echols
B2B Commercial Writer
and Marketing Communications Specialist

"Freedom comes from seeing the ignorance
of your critics and discovering the
emptiness of their virtue"  - Ayn Rand -
 (as quoted by Robert Ringer)

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Dorai Sitaram via]

 Ha! Glad I'm not the only one who is driven up the wall by newlines at the end 
of every sentence. I've heard this policy touted so many times by folk who are 
obviously expert (even those who don't troff), and I have no doubt at all it 
works for them. 


I just can't read or edit it to save my life. L*rd knows I've tried.


--d

 On Saturday, December 19, 2020, 01:17:02 PM EST, Peter Schaffter 
 wrote:  
 
 On Sat, Dec 19, 2020, Ulrich Lauther wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 10:27:01AM +, Dorai Sitaram wrote:
> > groff pretty much forces one to use two spaces after
> > sentence-ending punctuation, unless it's at the end of a source
> > line.
> 
> In my opinion it is good style to start every sentence on a new
> source line.

A piece of advice I have been happily ignoring since sometime back
in the 90s.  Certain kinds of texts (scientific, technical) and the
ways they are to be used (e.g. one off, or formatted for multiple media
types and platforms) undeniably benefit from it.  But I simply
cannot compose a work of fiction, or an article, or a rewiew one
screen line at a time.  It is not how one reads (at least not those
of us who grew up reading ink on dead trees), and significantly
interferes with one's ability to assess the meaning and flow of the
text.

This is the the first paragraph of _Bleak House_ typed one screen
line at a time, no wrap:

London.
Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn 
Hall.
Implacable November weather.
As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face 
of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet 
long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes 
of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might 
imagine, for the death of the sun.
Dogs, undistinguishable in mire.
Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers.
Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill 
temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands 
of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if 
this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, 
sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at 
compound interest.

I can't even read the whole text because half of it is off-screen!

Moreover, if I turn wrapping on, the last sentence alone takes up
six lines on an 80-col terminal and would be hell to edit for those
of us who use 'k' and 'j' to navigate up and down in vi since a
single 'j' moves the cursor six lines down--generally not what you
expect.  Wrap conflates 'k' and 'j' with '('and ')'.  In other words,
'k' and 'j' effectively become sentence navigation commands instead
of screen movement commands.  This represents a significant loss of
editing functionality.

Here's the same paragraph, 72 characters per line, automatic wrap.

"London.  Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting
 in Lincoln's Inn Hall.  Implacable November weather.  As much mud in
 the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of
 the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus,
 forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up
 Holborn Hill.  Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft
 black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown
 snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of
 the sun.  Dogs, undistinguishable in mire.  Horses, scarcely better;
 splashed to their very blinkers.  Foot passengers, jostling one
 another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing
 their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other
 foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke
 (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon
 crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement,
 and accumulating at compound interest."

I can see all the text, my head doesn't have to swivel like at
a tennis match to read from left to right, and I can grasp the
overall effectiveness of the paragraph in a few seconds.  I can,
furthermore, navigate up and down in the text in the expected manner
in addition to jumping from sentence to sentence if I wish.

Since groff imposes no requirement that each sentence be a unique
source line, I see no reason even to suggest it to (new) users as
good style, except as a useful, and perhaps at times required,
strategy for collaborative/multiplatfom/multimedia documents.

Furthermore, since groff treats end of sentence characters followed
by one space, two spaces, or newlines identically when sentence
spacing is disabled (as it is by default), the issue of whether to
enter monospaced input with one or two spaces between sentences
is moot.  Either can be used.  I prefer two 

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Peter Schaffter]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2020, Ulrich Lauther wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 10:27:01AM +, Dorai Sitaram wrote:
> > groff pretty much forces one to use two spaces after
> > sentence-ending punctuation, unless it's at the end of a source
> > line.
> 
> In my opinion it is good style to start every sentence on a new
> source line.

A piece of advice I have been happily ignoring since sometime back
in the 90s.  Certain kinds of texts (scientific, technical) and the
ways they are to be used (e.g. one off, or formatted for multiple media
types and platforms) undeniably benefit from it.  But I simply
cannot compose a work of fiction, or an article, or a rewiew one
screen line at a time.  It is not how one reads (at least not those
of us who grew up reading ink on dead trees), and significantly
interferes with one's ability to assess the meaning and flow of the
text.

This is the the first paragraph of _Bleak House_ typed one screen
line at a time, no wrap:

London.
Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln's Inn 
Hall.
Implacable November weather.
As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face 
of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet 
long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill.
Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes 
of soot in it as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might 
imagine, for the death of the sun.
Dogs, undistinguishable in mire.
Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers.
Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill 
temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands 
of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if 
this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, 
sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at 
compound interest.

I can't even read the whole text because half of it is off-screen!

Moreover, if I turn wrapping on, the last sentence alone takes up
six lines on an 80-col terminal and would be hell to edit for those
of us who use 'k' and 'j' to navigate up and down in vi since a
single 'j' moves the cursor six lines down--generally not what you
expect.  Wrap conflates 'k' and 'j' with '('and ')'.  In other words,
'k' and 'j' effectively become sentence navigation commands instead
of screen movement commands.  This represents a significant loss of
editing functionality.

Here's the same paragraph, 72 characters per line, automatic wrap.

"London.  Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting
 in Lincoln's Inn Hall.  Implacable November weather.  As much mud in
 the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of
 the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus,
 forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up
 Holborn Hill.  Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft
 black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown
 snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of
 the sun.  Dogs, undistinguishable in mire.  Horses, scarcely better;
 splashed to their very blinkers.  Foot passengers, jostling one
 another's umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing
 their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other
 foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke
 (if this day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon
 crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement,
 and accumulating at compound interest."

I can see all the text, my head doesn't have to swivel like at
a tennis match to read from left to right, and I can grasp the
overall effectiveness of the paragraph in a few seconds.  I can,
furthermore, navigate up and down in the text in the expected manner
in addition to jumping from sentence to sentence if I wish.

Since groff imposes no requirement that each sentence be a unique
source line, I see no reason even to suggest it to (new) users as
good style, except as a useful, and perhaps at times required,
strategy for collaborative/multiplatfom/multimedia documents.

Furthermore, since groff treats end of sentence characters followed
by one space, two spaces, or newlines identically when sentence
spacing is disabled (as it is by default), the issue of whether to
enter monospaced input with one or two spaces between sentences
is moot.  Either can be used.  I prefer two because even in
proportional font typesetting, readability is improved by the space
between sentences being fractionally larger than the space between
words; two spaces is how you tell groff to use sentence spacing when
you're not doing sentence-by-line input.  Plus I'm scared that the
ghost of my highschool typing teacher is going to whack me with his
pointer for not double-spacing sentences.

-- 
Peter Schaffter

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Wim Stockman]

Maybe you can look at the . ss request
Which sets interword spacing as first argument and the second argument as
sentence space

Kind regards
Wim Stockman

Op za 19 dec. 2020 13:36 schreef Oliver Corff :

> Hi Dorai,
>
> the point behind the end-of-source-line rule is simple, and is hidden in
> many introductory chapters of textbooks on troff and groff: You are not
> forced (and even less encouraged) to preempt any formatting in your
> input text. None of your efforts with regard to line length, intended
> line breaks etc. you try to express in self-imposed "pretty-typing" will
> spill over to the groff formatter. The formatting engine will only, I
> repeat: only obey to explicit commands. Hitting  after a sentence
> period is such an explicit command and is as economical in terms of
> keystroke counts as it can be. Leave the formatting effort to groff
> (which does a better job than a human trying to mimick ascii formatting)
> and concentrate on the semantics of what you type, and you'll see that
> this is much easier than to remember and verify if all of your
> end-of-sentence full stops were followed by two spaces instead of one,
> which is actually not a good idea at all because the formatter (and
> associated macro packages) might have a different idea how an
> end-of-sentence--new-sentence distance should look like, e.g. in
> languages other than English. It might be a space only, a space and a
> half, always assuming that a space is some kind of fixed length. French
> is a good example of punctuation mark rules which look weird to
> non-French readers but which visually "make sense" in fine examples of
> French typography. German doesn't have a "two spaces is new sentence"
> concept either.
>
> troff, from the very onset of its conception, is a fine example of why
> we have division of labour, and if the designer and the user of a tool
> share this understanding, the tool can be put to better use.
>
> Please accept my apologies if I sounded rant-ish, this was not my
> intent. The question simply scratched me at a sensitive point. I once
> organized a collaborative effort to reproduce a text which featured
> around 250,000 words in eight (yes: 8) formatting variants (due to the
> number of languages represented). When planning the project, the sheer
> magnitude of these numbers made me analyze and identify potential error
> sources in the clerical work involved, and the number of keystrokes (and
> their impact on the effort to achieve a well-formed and valid source
> text) every colleague would require to finish the task was by far not a
> minor concern. In this context, using two spaces where one  would
> have produced the desired result rather than with two spaces producing a
> faint lookalike which misguides the formatting engine was one of the
> no-go areas identified.
>
> Oliver.
>
>
> On 19/12/2020 11:57, Damian McGuckin wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, 19 Dec 2020, Ulrich Lauther wrote:
> >
> >> On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 10:27:01AM +, Dorai Sitaram wrote:
> >>> groff pretty much forces one to use two spaces after sentence-ending
> >>> punctuation, unless it's at the end of a source line.
> >>
> >> In my opinion it is good style to start every sentence on a new
> >> source line.
> >
> > We use this as a rule and have for decades.
> >
> > Regards - Damian
> >
> > Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW
> > 2037
> > Ph:+61-2-8571-0847 .. Fx:+61-2-9692-9623 | unsolicited email not
> > wanted here
> > Views & opinions here are mine and not those of any past or present
> > employer
> >
>
>

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Oliver Corff]

Hi Dorai,

the point behind the end-of-source-line rule is simple, and is hidden in
many introductory chapters of textbooks on troff and groff: You are not
forced (and even less encouraged) to preempt any formatting in your
input text. None of your efforts with regard to line length, intended
line breaks etc. you try to express in self-imposed "pretty-typing" will
spill over to the groff formatter. The formatting engine will only, I
repeat: only obey to explicit commands. Hitting  after a sentence
period is such an explicit command and is as economical in terms of
keystroke counts as it can be. Leave the formatting effort to groff
(which does a better job than a human trying to mimick ascii formatting)
and concentrate on the semantics of what you type, and you'll see that
this is much easier than to remember and verify if all of your
end-of-sentence full stops were followed by two spaces instead of one,
which is actually not a good idea at all because the formatter (and
associated macro packages) might have a different idea how an
end-of-sentence--new-sentence distance should look like, e.g. in
languages other than English. It might be a space only, a space and a
half, always assuming that a space is some kind of fixed length. French
is a good example of punctuation mark rules which look weird to
non-French readers but which visually "make sense" in fine examples of
French typography. German doesn't have a "two spaces is new sentence"
concept either.

troff, from the very onset of its conception, is a fine example of why
we have division of labour, and if the designer and the user of a tool
share this understanding, the tool can be put to better use.

Please accept my apologies if I sounded rant-ish, this was not my
intent. The question simply scratched me at a sensitive point. I once
organized a collaborative effort to reproduce a text which featured
around 250,000 words in eight (yes: 8) formatting variants (due to the
number of languages represented). When planning the project, the sheer
magnitude of these numbers made me analyze and identify potential error
sources in the clerical work involved, and the number of keystrokes (and
their impact on the effort to achieve a well-formed and valid source
text) every colleague would require to finish the task was by far not a
minor concern. In this context, using two spaces where one  would
have produced the desired result rather than with two spaces producing a
faint lookalike which misguides the formatting engine was one of the
no-go areas identified.

Oliver.


On 19/12/2020 11:57, Damian McGuckin wrote:


On Sat, 19 Dec 2020, Ulrich Lauther wrote:


On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 10:27:01AM +, Dorai Sitaram wrote:

groff pretty much forces one to use two spaces after sentence-ending
punctuation, unless it's at the end of a source line.


In my opinion it is good style to start every sentence on a new
source line.


We use this as a rule and have for decades.

Regards - Damian

Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW
2037
Ph:+61-2-8571-0847 .. Fx:+61-2-9692-9623 | unsolicited email not
wanted here
Views & opinions here are mine and not those of any past or present
employer

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Damian McGuckin]

On Sat, 19 Dec 2020, Ulrich Lauther wrote:


On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 10:27:01AM +, Dorai Sitaram wrote:

groff pretty much forces one to use two spaces after sentence-ending 
punctuation, unless it's at the end of a source line.


In my opinion it is good style to start every sentence on a new source line.


We use this as a rule and have for decades.

Regards - Damian

Pacific Engineering Systems International, 277-279 Broadway, Glebe NSW 2037
Ph:+61-2-8571-0847 .. Fx:+61-2-9692-9623 | unsolicited email not wanted here
Views & opinions here are mine and not those of any past or present employer

Re: End-of-sentence spacing

[Ulrich Lauther]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 10:27:01AM +, Dorai Sitaram wrote:
> groff pretty much forces one to use two spaces after sentence-ending 
> punctuation, unless it's at the end of a source line. 

In my opinion it is good style to start every sentence on a new source line.
This is helpful for editing the text.

Best,

ulrich