Doing The Two-Space Tango

09 January 2023, 03:39 PM

Nina

I still do the two space thing. I thought that most word processors remove them, anyway.

Life is too short to worry about this, though I'm aware that many Gen Z's and millennials sneer at we boomers over this. Tough nougies .

I think it's a remnant from ye olde typesetting, where sentences would be separated by an m-dash, while words were separated by an n-dash.

09 January 2023, 08:23 PM

piqué

quote:

I really, really hate documents, student papers, cover letters etc. that are justified on both the left and the right side of the page. And I feel like it's harder to read that way. But at the same time, maybe that's just my imagination, because I know some books are set up like that.

SK, the reason justified type is perfectly readable in printed material and hard to read in a manuscript is because in printed material the typesetter has made adjustments in the letter spacing that computers do not make. Again an example of how design judgement can achieve what a computer on its own cannot.

09 January 2023, 08:29 PM

ShiroKuro

quote:
because in printed material the typesetter has made adjustments in the letter spacing that computers do not make.

Yes, that explains it!! I hate the automated spacing created by computerized right-justifying.

Re Nina's comment:

quote:
I'm aware that many Gen Z's and millennials sneer at we boomers over this.

I am pretty tired of the generational sneering in general. Sigh.

10 January 2023, 12:09 AM

AdagioM

quote:
Originally posted by ShiroKuro:
Japanese is funny because of all the different ways it can be written. It originally was only read top to bottom from the upper right. Then horizontal also became an option, but that was right to left. Then, presumably due to influence from the west, horizontal writing started to be written left to right, while vertical remained with its start in the upper right.

At some point, horizontal writing that was written right to left basically fell out of favor, maybe this coincided with printing press technological advancements. So the main options were: vertical/top to bottom starting in the upper right, or horizontal reading left to right.

Novels/fiction tends to be printed vertically, while essays, textbooks, manuals, rules, regulations etc. tend to be printed horizontally. Newspapers use a mix of vertical and horizontal text, sometimes in the same article!

Internet text is usually horizontal but not always. And when you're writing in something like MS Word, the default is horizontal, but it's very easy to change it vertical.

BUT! the option to write horizontally and read (or write) right to left remained and in contemporary Japan this kind of writing is primarily seen in 1) fancy scrolls or artwork, or 2) cars and ships on the passenger (or starboard) side. Why? Because if a vehicle is coming at you and you're on that side, you would read the characters right to left as the vehicle goes by.

Sorry, that's probably more than you wanted to know!!

Actually, I found that fascinating. Thank you!