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by technofire 3164 days ago
Does anyone else find it surprising and remarkable that Paul Tudor Jones' monospaced letter is perfectly flush on the left and right margins with apparently no hyphenation nor additional inserted spaces within the lines? Surely this did not happen by coincidence (?).
5 comments

Looking closely, it doesn't actually seem to be monospaced. For instance in the last-but-two line the "t" in "we project" is pretty much midway between the two letters of "it" in the line below it. The text has been justified I think both by increases in inter-word spacing and by putting slightly more space between letters as necessary.
Does that mean there's a 1/4 space button on his typewriter that he started using towards the end of the line?
Presumably done by an electronic typewriter? AFAIK they would buffer a line (or more?) of whatever you're writing, and when you hit enter, everything will be printed/punched out. I'm guessing it has a setting to justify, and it does that by adjusting the gaps between letters.
Indeed. With a font that's monospaced (or close) that kind of justification isn't hard. I had a typewriter that could do that. (I don't remember how it handled hyphenation)

Those typewriters were an odd generation, technology between PCs and the older but more expensive IBM Selectric typewriters. I cannot remember if mine was called a "word processor" (I don't think so) but it certainly had a little 8-bit computer in there.

Definitely not monospaced. These four words are all 5 letters but different lengths. https://i.imgur.com/Iq6cVhl.png
I assume you are surprised because it's the 80s?

I was typing up right and left justified essays for school using Wordstar on my CP/M machine in the early 80s and printing them out on a daisy-wheel printer. I could choose a monospace or proportional font or different font size by loading a different font wheel. I am sure Wall Street players had access to fancier tech.

It's proportionally spaced. This was an option on early word processors and daisy-wheel printers.