[COFF] [TUHS] The Elements Of Style: UNIX As Literature

[Clem Cole]

Exactly -- just re-read Will's question.  2 spaces after punctuation is a
fix-size typeface solution to the 1.5 typographer layout.

I was referring to why typed papers were traditionally double spaced
between the lines.

On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 11:02 AM Chris Torek <torek at elf.torek.net> wrote:

> >I use single spaces between sentences, but my ancestors
> >used 2... who knows why? :).
>
> Typewriters.
>
> In typesetting, especially when doing right-margin justification,
> we have "stretchy spaces" between words.  The space after end-of-
> sentence punctuation marks is supposed to be about 50% larger than
> the width of the between-words spaces, and if the word spaces get
> stretched, so should the end-of-sentence space.  Note that this is
> all in the variable-pitch font world.
>
> Since typewriters are fixed-pitch, the way to emulate the
> 1.5-space-wide gap is to expand it to 2.
>
> Chris
>
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