Top all-time · #8597
Sentence Spacing
Personal blog · widespacer.blogspot.comdesignhistorywriting
Sentence Spacing is a personal blog at widespacer.blogspot.com about design, history and writing. Since 2015, 9 different Hacker News readers have linked it 16 times, most often “QWERTY (2015)”. The last post was in 2016, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (5) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Linked in HN threads on typesetting and typewriters as a reference on sentence spacing after periods, linotype justification and QWERTY history. Commenters cite it without judging the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 5 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A typography blog about the history of wide sentence spacing, aka "how many spaces after a period between sentences".
Most-linked posts?
- QWERTY (2015)2 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-02-04
- /2014/01/two-spaces-old-typists-habit.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-11-02
What Hacker News says?
The old linotype machines had visual indicators of minimum and maximum line width, and the operator would make a judgement call with each line. Spacers would then automatically justify the letters. It was all mechanical and amazing. See http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2014/01/two-spaces-old-typist... for many details.
Comment linking /2014/01/two-spaces-old-typists-habit.html
on “Better typography with text-wrap pretty”Submitted The Lost Key of QWERTY (2016) as a story · 190 points
HN discussionIt seems like the original blog post got it wrong there. See the comment by "godspace"[1] and the link they provided[2]. The | indicates a line break but the ︙ indicates a logo. [1] http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-lost-key-of-qwert... [2] https://www.newspapers.com/image/39396241/?fcfToken=eyJhbGci...
Comment linking /2016/03/the-lost-key-of-qwerty.html?showComment=1554335976506
on “The Lost Key of QWERTY (2016)”Submitted Identifying a 19th century telescope as a story · 4 points
HN discussionLinked paper [0] correctly states that QWERTY wasn't designed to slow typists down, but authors argue that it was not designed to avoid type-bar jams, but only vaguely suggest some letters were moved around due to Morse operation practice. They base that conclusion on analysis of radial distances of common digrams on typebar basket. But there's no justification why only angle criteria was considered, and they omitte…
Comment linking /2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of-qwerty.html
on “A tool that increased my typing speed”Submitted One or two spaces after a period? How about three? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIn fact, QWERTY was designed to prevent jamming of early typewriters, allowing to type faster . http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of...
Comment linking /2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of-qwerty.html
on “A tool that increased my typing speed”Submitted QWERTY (2015) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionQWERTY was designed for enabling fast typing by avoiding typebar jams. See http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of...
Comment linking /2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of-qwerty.html
on “How bad is QWERTY, really? A review of the literature, such as it is”Submitted One or two spaces after a period? How about three? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionOne of the things I love about linotype text justification is that it’s actually really a solution to a mechanical problem - the machine needs to make a complete line of text every time without leaving gaps at the end of the mold, and squeeze all the character blanks together tightly to prevent lead from squirting out - so driving wedges in between words to squeeze them together is a neat solution to that problem. T…
Comment linking /2014/01/two-spaces-old-typists-habit.html
on “Etaoin Shrdlu”Submitted One or two spaces after a period? How about three? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionhttp://widespacer.blogspot.com/2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of...
Comment linking /2015/11/the-hidden-secrets-of-qwerty.html
on “Untangling the myths and mysteries of Dvorak and QWERTY (2023)”Submitted The Hidden Secrets of QWERTY (2015) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionGuido van Rossum writing: > I think it's mostly propaganda by Knuth and Kernighan (TeX and troff) that makes people want this. > Let's keep HTML simple! was unexpected. Knuth as propaganda! The discussion noted some O’Reilly books sentence-spaced, and layout software had different levels of support with TeX notably supporting it. And that’s the key: it’s a typographical layout choice. For document input, for writers…
Comment linking /
on “Space After Periods (1993)”Check this out: http://widespacer.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-river-runs-through-...
Comment linking /2012/12/a-river-runs-through-it.html
on “One or two spaces after a period? How about three?”
