Language and English

From: Wayne M. Smith <wmsmith_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Tue Jan 8 23:58:06 2002

>
> I, too, find it of immense interest. I recall being taught that
> paragraphs were indented 5 spaces. I also remember that this was not
> universal, as there was another variation, called "block style" which was
> not indented at all.
>
> I have been looking at a number of books, and noticed that some have a
> single space between sentences, others two spaces. This occurrs in both
> US and UK editions. I even noticed a German grammar in blackletter that
> uses the double spaces, although it was US printed. I do notice, though,
> that the double spacing enhances the readability of the text.
>

In a lawsuit I was involved in regarding an IEEE audio serial interface spec, the expert attempted to explain block/frame
identifiers to a lay jury by analogizing them to punctuation identifying the beginnings of paragraphs and sentences. An indent
indicated the start of a block (and the first frame in the block) and a period indicated the start of a frame (that was not the
first frame in the block). Under this analogy, the spaces after the period were superfluous.
Received on Tue Jan 08 2002 - 23:58:06 GMT