Re: Espace double (complement)

[Jacques Andre <Jacques.Andre@xxxxxxxx>]

Philippe Jallon wrote:
> 
> Bonjour,
> 
> Sur la même liste de diffusion consacrée à Eudora, un contributeur
> donne une explication très typo : [...]

Cette question de " single or double space after full stop?" est aussi
fréquente sur la liste anglo-saxonne TYPO-L que celle de l'usage des
accents sur les caps chez nous.
TYPO-L a été pas mal envahi par ce sujet en mai 1998, un message clé me
semblant el suivant :




> 
> First, the quick answer: single space after full stops (a.k.a. periods) is
> standard nowadays in typeset material.
> 
> Then some history: I'm not sure when printers began to introduce an
> em quad after a period, but my impression is that the change took place in
> the 19th century. Certainly it's very uncommon before then. By the end of
> the century, some knowledgeable folks were arguing that the gaps of
> white space disfigured the page by reducing its even tone. As far as I
> know, Emery Walker was the first to make this case, and William Morris
> picked up the doctrine from him, though in the very earliest surviving
> proof of the Kelmscott Press you can see Morris still struggling to
> persuade his compositor to use an ordinary space in that position.
> 
> In other words, this reversion to an older practice came about mainly
> through the influence of a private press. However, commercial printers and
> publishers continued to cling to the em quad for several decades
> thereafter, and occasionally one sees book compositors still
> following the nineteenth-century pattern (though now probably by just
> hitting the space bar twice); but in this century it is usually taken to
> be a sign of bad typography.
> 
> And typing teachers to this day are wedded to the double space
> between sentences. I find it almost impossible to convince touch typists
> that it's a tiresome habit. They regard that double tap of the space bar
> as a sacred obligation -- just as obligatory as keeping your fingers on
> the home row of keys.
> 
> Any typesetter who works with files submitted by authors or contributors
> knows that you have to routinely clean up such files with a
> search-and-replace to remove those nasty second spaces.
> 
> William S. Peterson
> English Department
> University of Maryland
> wsp@xxxxxxxxxxx

Mais en mars 1999 qqun écrit :
>Using AOL's mail spellcheck recently, I noticed it changes a single space
>after a period to a double space...
et les réactions sont reparties de plus belle !


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-- 
Jacques André
Irisa/Inria-Rennes,   Campus de Beaulieu,  F-35042 Rennes Cedex,  
France
Tél. : +33 2 99 84 73 50,  fax : +33 2 99 84 71 71, email :
jandre@xxxxxxxx