James Edward Gray II wrote:
> On Aug 4, 2006, at 8:20 AM, Mike Harris wrote:
> 
>> It would be nice if you could assume two spaces after a end of 
>> sentence with puncuation.  Generally I think that's correct grammar, 
>> although my grammar stinks so I could easily be wrong.  If you have to 
>> get into parsing incorrect grammar it becomes much more difficult.
> 
> Actually, that's an old typographical convention that we can't seem to 
> shake.  Here's an report that talks a little about the issue:
> 
>   http://webword.com/reports/period.html
> 
> Here's an explanation from that report:
> 
>   The only reason that two spaces were used after a period during the
>   'typewriter' age was because original typewriters had monospaced
>   fonts -- the extra space was needed for the eye to pick up on the 
> beginning
>   of a new sentence. That need is negated w/proportional space type, hence
>   [it is] the typographic standard.

Very interesting. It's also very interesting to me that I spend most of 
my time reading and writing in monospaced fonts and I think two spaces 
looks worse in monospace, so I only ever use one. When typing in 
proportional fonts I sometimes still do a double-space, but mostly I've 
given up caring what others think and just do what I want (one space), 
similar to the situation with punctuation inside or outside of quotation 
marks. I blame latex for my nonchalant attitude, however no matter how 
much I use latex I will never fall for the horrendously wrong `` '' 
convention.