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Two Spaces After Period Are Better Than One, Except Maybe They Aren't, Study Finds

posted by Fnord666 on Friday May 11 2018, @12:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the BBC-thinks-it's-a-paragraph-break-after-a-period dept.

MrPlow writes:

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.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/two-spaces-after-period-are-better-than-one-except-maybe-they-arent-study-finds/

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Friday May 11 2018, @02:28PM (1 child)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 11 2018, @02:28PM (#678388) Journal

    In HTML, spaces and certain other characters are treated as "whitespace" which is a single thing.

    but what happens if I have whitespace on a dark themed web page?

    --
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  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday May 11 2018, @10:41PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Friday May 11 2018, @10:41PM (#678598) Journal

    Meh -- I think it's just a lazy way to deal with a line wrap between two space characters so the first line doesn't start with a space. I can understand why whitespace can be important in a command, script, or program -- but in the output?? That feels lazy.