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Re: Texinfo manual: Sentence spacing


From: Gavin Smith
Subject: Re: Texinfo manual: Sentence spacing
Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2017 11:59:59 +0100

On 16 June 2017 at 14:46, Vincent Lefevre <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> In the Texinfo manual, section on @frenchspacing:
>
>   
> https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/_0040frenchspacing.html
>
>   "In American typography, it is traditional and correct to put
>   extra space at the end of a sentence. This is the default in
>   Texinfo (implemented in Info and printed output; for HTML, we
>   don’t try to override the browser). In French typography (and
>   others), this extra space is wrong; all spaces are uniform."
>
> This is misleading. One has the impression than in American
> typography, extra space is preferred. However, this is no longer
> the case nowadays:
>
>   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentence_spacing
>
>   "From around 1950, single sentence spacing became standard in
>   books, magazines and newspapers, and the majority of style guides
>   that use a Latin-derived alphabet as a language base now prescribe
>   or recommend the use of a single space after the concluding
>   punctuation of a sentence."

Well, OK. Do you have a suggestion for how the wording could be changed?

This would be in the manual to explain why the printed output (with
TeX) uses English spacing. The historical reason why it uses English
spacing is that that is the default of TeX (not that that is of
interest to a user).

The problem with the current wording could be the meaning of the word
"traditional", which could be interpreted in varying ways. Perhaps it
could say "Texinfo uses an style of sentence spacing frequent in older
American typography."



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