Quote:
Originally posted by amanda6035
She said (and I forgot the technical term for it) that each letter used to take up the same amound of space width-wise (ie: the letter "i" was just was wide as an "m" and because of that, two spaces was necessary to break up teh sentences and make it easier to read.)
|
You're talking about proportional and non-proportional fonts. In non-proportional fonts, which is what all typewriters use, each character takes up the same amount of space.
Computers make proportional fonts (or typeset fonts) available, so that the "i" (or the "." or the " ") takes up less space than an "M."
But I don't buy your professor's reasoning. Because a "." takes such a small amount of space in a proportional font, I think the use of two spaces is more, not less, necessary to facilitate ease of reading. I know I find a proportional font harder to read if there is just one space at the end of a sentence.
FWIW, my word processing program, by default, puts two spaces at the end of a sentence -- even if I only type one space, when I start the next sentence, it will add a second space automatically. This default option can be turned off, of course, or changed so that two spaces become one space, but one-space-to-two was the default.