> two spaces after a paragraph has been a dead convention for years by this point.
It's "a dead convention" among people who care about the aesthetic pleasure that they get from the visual beauty of the paragraph and who don't like the "ugliness" of the extra spacing.
People who care more about serving the reader are less dogmatic about two spaces after a sentence, and even prefer it for legal documents, because two spaces makes it easier for a skimmer to jump from sentence to sentence.
That's a styling issue, not to be solved by typing two spaces unless you're using a typewriter. Just adjust the size of a space to the appropriate size when the text is rendered for the reader (in a word processor for example).
Even though it is a styling issue (I want about 1.5), you still need to distinguish the cases to the renderer. If you want different intersentence spacing than interword spacing, you can't just check for the presence of a period -- the rendered versions of abbreviations like "Mr.", "etc.", etc. need to not have two spaces after them. You either need a whole lot of exceptions built-in (which still fails for sentence that end with abbreviations), or to somehow mark the difference. Multiple spaces is still a nice source convention, because it's minimal and shows up approximately correctly.
(LaTeX does do simple finding of periods to support different interword and intersentence spacing. The recommendation is to use ~ after abbreviations; as a non-breaking space it also keeps Mr.~Whatsisname from appearing on two lines.)
> That's a styling issue, not to be solved by typing two spaces unless you're using a typewriter. Just adjust the size of a space to the appropriate size when the text is rendered for the reader (in a word processor for example).
Except that advice is way less accessible and has a fairly high cost-benefit ratio:
* Typing two spaces after a sentence: something everyone who can type already understands.
* "[A]djust[ing] the size of a space to the appropriate size when the text is rendered for the reader (in a word processor for example)": something only a tiny fraction know how do do, and even fewer are comfortable with. It's likely some unintuitive UI that is nonstandard, and that has even been changed at points between different versions of the same Word Processor.
> Just adjust the size of a space to the appropriate size
That would work IF the rendering engine knew it was supposed to use a horizontally-larger space at the end of a sentence (comparable to the CSS styling element "padding-right"). A uniformly-larger space would defeat the purpose, namely to make it easier to spot the end of the sentence through the extra space after it.
LaTeX renders slightly longer space between sentences by default. You need to put "\ " after a dot that is not an end of a sentence to have a normal space there.
Relatively-few lawyers even know what LaTeX is, let alone would be willing to use it for drafting documents for client use.
(At a family reunion a few years ago, I was discussing a book-in-progress with an extended-family member, who at the time was an exec in a very-large Silicon Valley tech company. He was astonished when I mentioned I was using LaTeX, via emacs org-mode, for the manuscript.)
And MS Word is ubiquitously used for contracts and other documents that get circulated for revision, because of Word's redlining- and commenting features. It's a network effect: "Everyone" uses Microsoft Word because "everyone else" uses Microsoft Word.
Actually it's a dead convention among all reputable typographers and style guides. Check Chicago Manual of Style. Check MLA. Check APA. Nobody whose business it is to establish the correct number of spaces to put between sentences believes that number to be two.
> Nobody whose business it is to establish the correct number of spaces to put between sentences
What's the metric for establishing what is the "correct" number of spaces? I submit that it's functional, not aesthetic: the speed at which users — i.e., readers — grasp the information being presented. Whether typographers regard a single space as prettier is less important.
If the speed users grasp the information presented is most important, is there any objective measurement that 1 vs 2 spaces actually makes a difference.
I would suggest rather then some arcane spacing convention, the simplicity and clarity of the wording is objectively far more important then any style guide. I would also suggest that this is something the legal profession is generally very bad at with the amount of legal jargon found in most documents produced in the profession.
> is there any objective measurement that 1 vs 2 spaces actually makes a difference.
One (small) study said that two spaces increases reading speed by about 3% [0] [1] [2]; I couldn't find any indication whether scanning and skimming speeds were studied.
From an article: "When the double-space was present, their eyes fixated less on the break between sentences and they moved to the next one more quickly. Ultimately, it seemed it was a bit easier for their brains to make sense of when sentences were more clearly broken up." [3]
> the simplicity and clarity of the wording is objectively far more important [than] any style guide. ... this is something the legal profession is generally very bad at with the amount of legal jargon found in most documents produced in the profession.
Agreed! I teach advanced contract drafting to third-year law students; I stress two principal rules: (A) Short, Single-Subject Paragraphs — don't be a L.O.A.D. [Lazy Or Arrogant Drafter] [4], and (B) BLUF - Bottom Line Up Front [5]. Following those two rules will produce the biggest bang for the buck in terms of improved readability.
the study provides an interesting read, thanks for the link.
It is interesting when you look at the reading results, in particular the only significant difference in reading speed was for people that typed using 2 spaces at the end of a sentence, when they also were reading a document formatted that way. (I note that the other 3 articles cite back to the same source study)
This would appear to show that considering most people outside the legal profession do not follow that convention, that there is no real benefit, particularly when even this improvement was not considered statistically significant in the study.
I did a quick skim of the course notes, and I can defiantly agree with the principals your teaching. I hope your students appreciate just how important those points are in all there written communication.
The Bluebook specifically says to defer to the Chicago Manual of Style where the Bluebook does not prescribe a rule.
Chicago requires 1 space.
Also, the Bluebook is at most followed only in spirit, more commonly in the breach. Most of it is specifically for "scholarly" articles, not practitioners' documents. Smallcaps is an important part of following Bluebook for scholarship! There is a slim section on how to translate requirements to briefs, but it is underspecified so lawyers just kind of muddle along. All while insisting they follow it to the letter. They don't.
Personally, I'm not familiar with any double-space rule. I simply mentioned the Bluebook in response to the above poster's misleading argument that a legal convention is "dead" on the basis of style guides that aren't generally relevant to lawyers.
Why does that matter? If being stuck in the past, objectively is better than so be it. We should debate whether the idea has merit on its own, not whether society has moved on from it or not. There are a lot of things we've abandoned that were objectively good and replaced with inferior things.
There is no objectivly better here though, its entirely subjective.
The fact that the rest of society has moved on is a fairly clear indication that this subjective premise that 2 spaces is in some way better, shows it clearly does not show enough objective benefit to remain in use or it would be common practice in all of society.
edit: a sibling comment has provided links to a study on this, showing there is not statistically significant improvement in reading speeds reinforcing that this formatting is not objectivly better.
Yea I have no idea what’s better or not. I’m not arguing about specifics. I don’t know anything about writing style. That wasn’t the point I was trying to get across.
It's clearly not a dead convention in the legal sector, given that you have heard from numerous lawyers who use it. I am one such lawyer - it is part of my firm's style guide.
It's "a dead convention" among people who care about the aesthetic pleasure that they get from the visual beauty of the paragraph and who don't like the "ugliness" of the extra spacing.
People who care more about serving the reader are less dogmatic about two spaces after a sentence, and even prefer it for legal documents, because two spaces makes it easier for a skimmer to jump from sentence to sentence.