Yet still more from The Old Editor
More tweets collected for you.
The Old Editor says:
"Coveted" is as empty a piece of padding as "prestigious." Thou shalt not covet.
Stories to desk. Page One decisions made. Secret to improved copy flow: More national holidays.
You can’t fatten poor stock.
One of these days, I'm going to buy the newsroom a watch.
If you don't get it, don't use it.
Take care not to scorch the popcorn, and never heat up fish in the office microwave.
In interviews, always ask prospective employees whether they go in for home baking.
Journalistic ethics you should have learned by the second grade: Don't copy. Don't tell lies.
If [name] had written the Bible, you wouldn't be able to fit it in a boxcar. And it wouldn't be done yet.
If there's a word in the text you don't understand, and you let the text go, you haven't edited it.
Always honor the writer's intentions. If they can be discerned and make any sense.
RTFP. [Explanation for civilians: An exhortation to read one's own publication, with an intensive added]
Production of journalism, like the driving of mules, cannot be accomplished without swearing.
Unless you're still using an Underwood, it's one space after a period. One. Period.
Comments
Only one space after a period? NO CAN DO!
Posted by: MichiganCityDDS | November 30, 2011 9:44 AM
That's all right. An editor will take out the extra spaces for you.
Posted by: John McIntyre | November 30, 2011 11:42 AM
How is the amount of whitespace a hard and fast rule, rather than an aesthetic choice of the content creator? My hypothesis is that it's become popular simply because It reduces production cost.
http://www.tomsarazac.com/tom/opinions/space-after-periods.html
tom
Posted by: Thomas A. Fine | November 30, 2011 12:39 PM
I have read the essay on Mr. Fine's link twice now (and, readers, I do not recommend it), and I marvel that for all his exploration of the subject, he has not encountered, or absorbed, the simple explanation that the proportional fonts in modern word processing render the double-spacing of typewriter monotype fonts obsolete.
Mr. Fine is welcome to pursue his own aesthetic, but if he submits a text for publication, his editor will have the chore of removing his superfluous spaces.
Posted by: John McIntyre | November 30, 2011 12:48 PM
Two links to posts at which this matter has been dealt with previously:
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/mcintyre/blog/2010/08/just_one_space_please.html
http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/mcintyre/blog/2010/08/all_right_all_right_keep_the_extra_space.html
Posted by: John McIntyre | November 30, 2011 12:50 PM
Not only have I encountered that explanation, I addressed it in my essay.
The thing that you and everyone else seems to overlook is that for over 800 years, proportional fonts were the rule. Hand typeset fonts WERE proportional. And for all of those centuries, the preferred aesthetic was extra space.
Typewriters are a brief blip in printing history, and had little effect on anything. The only interesting thing about them in terms of space is not how they needed extra space. It's the opposite - their spaces were ridiculously large compared to fonts before and since.
Your proportional/fixed explanation fails because it is not consistent with the facts. My hypothesis however is consistent throughout history - single spacing only dominates where production cost dominates.
tom
Posted by: Thomas A. Fine | November 30, 2011 1:11 PM
I see single spacing on almost everything I read. Why the fight?
(BTW, thanks for citing the previous posts; I thought I was experiencing deja vu.)
Posted by: Toma | November 30, 2011 2:19 PM
True enough that handset type was proportional, but when I learned to set it back in the '60s, the prof insisted on one en-space between words and one en-space between sentences. We used em-spaces at the tops of paragraphs.
So proportional spaced computer type with only one space at the ends of sentences was perfectly comfortable to me.
Posted by: dj | November 30, 2011 8:12 PM
As another commenter noted, historically extra space was added in proportional fonts. In monospace fonts, the extra space improves appearance. It makes good sense on the computer, just as it did on the typewriter.
One should feel free to double space after the period. If the material is eventually rendered in a proportional font, the computer can clean it up. (The book editor should not waste his time with such, since the machine can do it better and faster.)
Posted by: Alan Larson | December 20, 2011 3:28 AM