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posted by
Fnord666
on Friday May 11 2018, @12:26PM
from the BBC-thinks-it's-a-paragraph-break-after-a-period dept.
from the BBC-thinks-it's-a-paragraph-break-after-a-period dept.
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
In what may be one of the most controversial studies of the year, researchers at Skidmore College—clearly triggered by a change in the American Psychological Association (APA) style book—sought to quantify the benefits of two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence. After conducting an eye-tracking experiment with 60 Skidmore students, Rebecca L. Johnson, Becky Bui, and Lindsay L. Schmitt found that two spaces at the end of a period slightly improved the processing of text during reading. The research was trumpeted by some press outlets as a vindication of two-spacers' superiority.
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Two Spaces After Period Are Better Than One, Except Maybe They Aren't, Study Finds
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Nadia Comaneci, simple perfection.
-- '76 Olympics
(Score: 5, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday May 11 2018, @01:28PM (5 children)
Agreed.
That's sort of true, but a bit misleading. Hand typesetting did use lots of different width spaces. But the general rule for roughly 300 years of typesetting (from the 1600s until mid-20th century) was that spaces after punctuation got bigger spaces, and spaces after periods got extra wide spaces. One can easily see this by looking at almost any printed matter from the early 20th century or before. Typewriters approximated that rule with a double or even triple space, but really the way it became a standard was in Monotype and Linotype operators back in the early days of mechanical typesetting (which didn't have the flexibility of spaces that hand typesetters had).
For a long detailed history of all this with historical citations of printing manuals, see here [archive.org].
This is all incorrect. Well, the fact that computers CAN do variable spacing IS correct. But there is no such thing as "correct amount of space" -- it's a stylistic choice that has varied over the centuries and by the typeface used. And to my knowledge the vast majority of professional proportional fonts that kern around periods actually REDUCE space, not add it. Unless you're using LaTeX with settings to add space after periods or something, most word processors and design software will use the font kerning settings, which will tend to reduce space after periods (if they modify it at all).
"Many programs" is sort of misleading. If you're doing HTML or variants of markup and that actually aren't WYSIWYG in text entry, you're correct. If you're using the sort of word processor that the vast majority of people actually use for basic formatting (e.g., Microsoft Word), it will definitely pay attention to your extra space.
As for whether it's "obsolete and stupid" -- that's a matter of opinion. Personally, for older "classic" typefaces, I like the look of slightly broader spaces after punctuation and even broader spaces after periods. But most word processors other than LaTeX don't do such things automatically. So, if you like that look but want a quick way to approximate it, two spaces isn't exactly a terrible way.
But it's ultimately a stylistic design choice that ideally should be made taking into account other design factors (typeface, leading, other font characteristics). Unfortunately computer typographers these days have mostly been brainwashed into believing that there's only one kind of space or even the myths you quote about programs mostly adding space for you... which you could verify they don't if you just look at the output of most applications.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by requerdanos on Friday May 11 2018, @03:39PM (4 children)
I see, understand, and respect your position, but I am not sure I agree.
In about year 7 or 8 of his schooling (about age 13), my son performed a similarly rigorous experiment comparing the cleaning power of water+Tide(r) brand laundry detergent, water plus the "Miracle Washball" MLM-scam laundry device [greenfinder.com.au], and, as a control, plain water, comparing their cleaning power on identical cotton shirts stained with concord grape juice, chocolate, and mustard.
To quote from his epic report, "The Tide cleaned the best. The nothing came in second and the wash ball was last."
Now, while Tide isn't going to be calling us for permission to use the report in marketing materials, nor has he shaken up the scientific establishment, it's still important for him, and other kids like those at Skidmore with their one-space-two-space-red-space-blue-space experiment, to do these science fair projects and keep the idea of science alive.
The "study" isn't garbage so much as it is a chance to teach kids to seek evidence-based answers.
In a post-facts world where the leader of its most powerful country justifies unsupported beliefs by saying "many people agree with me and they're very smart people" [newrepublic.com], this is more important than ever.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday May 11 2018, @04:14PM (1 child)
Well, I respect you, but honestly I'm not sure what to make of your opinion, which I think is likely uninformed in this case.
If this were an exploratory study in an area that no one had ever investigated empirically before, I might have a view similar to yours. However, that's not true. This is a well-studied area where I'm pretty sure there are at least several dozen previous studies on the topic of sentence spacing, reading speed, comprehension, etc. Many of those studies were poor and/or significantly flawed too. But the rigor with which this study was done was pretty atrocious compared to many previous efforts.
I'm not going to bother to critique the study, as a link in TFA already has a detailed critique [practicaltypography.com] already. And that's from someone who is sympathetic to the study's findings too.
The difference between your son's experiment and this one is that this one is being trumpeted as legitimate empirical research in a professional journal. And, as I said, it can't even get away with the "well, it's the first time someone tried doing this, so our conclusions may be preliminary" argument, as this is well-trodden ground.
The place for that is science-fair projects, not professional journals. I'm all for the kind of thing your son did, and I support kids doing stuff like this. But this is not a study for kids or by kids -- it's ADULT researchers who should know better. And it's ADULT journalists who are trumpeting this study to draw unsupported conclusions.
In a post-fact world, we should NEVER champion crappy science. Because you know who else champions crappy science? The President and his advisors!! They draw on "studies" that cherry-pick data deliberately, or even "studies" that come from a "faith-based" perspective or whatever. But then they throw out some numbers and "data" and suddenly it's supposed to look like "science."
That's NOT science -- that's voodoo dressing up as science. It's more important than ever these days to champion rigorous standards in science to differentiate the crappy studies that make headlines every day from good, legitimate research. One thing that's often forgotten these days is that stuff like Wikipedia's standards is what has led to our modern "fake news" era. Because it's not actually "post-fact" in some sense. It's possible, using the Wikipedia-like standard of "verifiability" to find facts that -- often taken out of context -- appear to support your position. But it's just as easy to construct a BS argument using such "verifiable facts" as it is to make stuff up.
At least the president is somewhat honest about his perspectives -- "I like this stuff because it agrees with what I think, and smart people agree with me." Yep -- that's nonsense, but it's just stating straight out that he doesn't give a crap about rigor. "Science" that dresses up BS conclusions in the veneer of math and respectibility is ten times more insidious and should be fought just as strongly.
I stand by the assessment of the GP I agreed with -- this study is garbage.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday May 11 2018, @07:24PM
I readily admit that this is so, and I believe that our areas of agreement vastly overshadow any minor areas of actual disagreement.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday May 11 2018, @04:28PM (1 child)
Studies like this are fine as long as they clearly state the limits of the study. No one uses monospace fonts these days, except maybe programmers or people writing simple text files, so it really isn't applicable. If they want to do a study using actual modern fonts, with actual modern software (which these days is largely something to do with HTML as another poster commented here), showing the actual effects and making recommendations for real-world use, that's fine, but it's just not what they did here. They did a study that is appropriate for people in 1970 using typewriters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 11 2018, @08:59PM
> No one uses monospace fonts these days, except maybe programmers or people writing simple text files, so it really isn't applicable.
I beg to differ [soylentnews.org] :P