Re: highlighting and fontification

[Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>]

"Edward J. Sabol" <sabol@alderaan.gsfc.nasa.gov> writes:

> Professional typesetting for books, etc. has never followed it to begin with.
> Pick up any book, and you won't find the spacing between sentences to be any
> larger than the spacing between words.

You certainly will, but only if you measure it carefully or have a very
discerning eye for these things. The difference in width is much smaller than
a factor of 2. 

Things generally went the other way; professional typesetting has existed much
longer than typewriters. Early typewriters were much more limiting than lead
typesetting, so many conventions for typesetting were adapted for typewriters.
Underlining was used where italics were appropriate, periods were placed
before quotes instead of kerned underneath them, and spaces were doubled after
periods instead of merely widened by a small amount.

Most of these conventions should have been forgotten when typewriters became
more capable and certainly should have by now with computers. But as often
happens the approximations are what most people have become familiar with and
are now repeated as rules without any idea what the original goal was.

-- 
greg