James Edward Gray, Jr., 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.

What sort of perversion would make anyone want to shake
an old convention that is useful?

>                 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.

Most people view the posts here in a monospaced font.
If they didn't, source code would look too chaotic.

TeX and LaTeX, for example, quite properly put extra space
after the end of a sentence.  Since what we type here will
usually be displayed monospaced, a sensible person who is
trying to make his message as readable as possible will put
two spaces between sentences.