tweets Yale sociologist Nicholas A. Christakis.
Science vindicates my longstanding practice, learned at age 12, of using TWO SPACES after periods in text.
He then links to a scientific study,Are two spaces better than one?
The effect of spacing following periods and commas during reading,which does not at all vindicate this practice.
Here is how to see through Dr. Christakiss lies.
First, some background.
The war between the one-spacers and the two-spacers is,like any war of no consequence, hard fought.
Its the kind of topic Slate writersspend 1300 words on.
Every slightly nerdy blog will eventually discuss it.
The two-spacers maintain that the extra space after each sentence makes paragraphs easier to read.
Baby boomers, as always, think their opinion is the default.)
The studyseemsto indicate that using two spaces increases reading speed.
Every character is the same width: The letterigets as much space as the letterm.
In a monospace font,iiiiiiandmmmmmmare the same length.
You rarely see them on blogs, or news sites, or email or texts or chat apps.
That is, most of us rarely read anything in monospace.
This alone makes the test useless.
But reading a proportional font and a monospace font are two completely different scenarios.
Of course its possiblethats what the whole debate is about!
Why would you use Courier New!
But this is still a small sample size, and one that doesnt represent the general reading populace.
The lines of writing were quadruple-spaced.
The only thing people read this way is an eye chart.
Think about that before you cite this study, two-spacing, butter-side-down-eatingZooks!
Can such students even be trusted?
(Reading comprehension stayed the same for both one-spacers and two-spacers.)
So were back to debating aesthetics and tradition.
She could find no study supporting the scientific organizations decision, so she ran her own.
Update 5/1 2:30 p.m. Is this the spark that lights the powder keg of war?
