I posted something. Then I noticed that it was formatted wrong! I went back to fix it in edit mode. It seemed fine in edit mode. I saved it again. It was still wrong.

The thing that was wrong: In source / edit, my sentences are separated with the charcters “period space space”. This is a typing standard that improves legibility, which is extra important in effortposts. However, in the displayed mode, one of every double space had been eaten! Every post, every comment, mangled! Sentences are separated with “period space” instead of “period space space” and the text is slightly less legible for it. I noticed it for questionmark space space and exclamationmark space space as well. There’s some secret life form eating spaces.

Testing behavior: Period Space: Sentence 1. Sentence 2.

Period Space Space: Sentence 1. Sentence 2.

Period Space Space Space: Sentence 1. Sentence 2.

Yep, saw it in preview, all the spaces are getting eaten. This is a crime against good style. I won’t go so far as to say this is a hate crime against anyone who struggles with reading and visual processing… yet. But the site is editing my comment in order to enforce an objectively worse typographical standard (period singlespace). Literally 19 84. yeonmi-park on Communist Bear Site they automatically censor out your punctuation marks in order to make your writing conform to a worse standard, calling double spaces a bourgeois decadent waste of space.

Please help

(Also, should this go in /c/technology or in /c/hexbear? It’s about both)

(Should I be submitting this as a bug report on github instead?)

  • Alice196498 [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    11 days ago

    I’ve never had anyone have a ſtruggle with wider ſpacing, but ſome people do find it ſtyliſtically unhappy or were taught ſomething wrong about it. There’s actually a lot of miſinformation ſurrounding the hiſtory of ſpacing and why it changed, ſuch as ſaying it’s a “  a veſtige of the typewriter era.” It’s not—we’ve done ſpacing like that for the entirety of printing hiſtory  : ſetting two ſpaces on typewriters was in emulation of the ſtandard printing practice. There’s actually a really neat blog that diſcuſſes this and other bits of hiſtory about it, which you and others might enjoy.
     I don’t perſonally know enough about MacOS tools to ſuggeſt ſomething that could enable mode ſuitable ſpacing characters automatically, but I can look into it it it would be helpful ! That ſoftware, depending on how it works, might be able to do it, though. Traditionally, we’d have the wideſt ſpace after terminal punctuation (between ſentences), ſlightly wider after colons and ſemi-colons, and very ſmall ſpaces between moſt punctuation and the words. The main point is to give the reader time to reſt and abſorb what they’ve juſt read, as well as to clearly deſignate and give importance to the punctuation and various parts of ſentences, but the wider ſpacing does ſerve other purpoſes as well.
     If you’re in a browſer and like reading with it, one thing I could recommend is a typeface that automatically ſpaces around punctuation and an addon like Stylus to apply it. Elſtob is one ſuch typeface. Here’s an example of what your comment looks like to me :