I’ve always thought that the best way to emulate the printer’s practice on a monspacing typewriter would have been to offset the period to the left of the key, giving slightly more space to the right.
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Eh, the extra-space convention doesn’t originate there, but the double-tap-of-the-space-bar-after-a-period originates with those who trained typists to do that, for their own ineffable reasons, and is continued by those who were presumably trained in typing by nuns with steel rulers, so religiously do they adhere to the convention.
—as opposed to those who were trained to drop an en-space in with the spaceband?
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Before my time. I only know that you don’t hear old movable-type printers and phototypesetter operators harping on about how nobody puts an em-space in any more and everybody should put them in even though the font metrics have done it for you already.
But that makes it OK for someone who did not generate the content to revise the content to “make it look right?”
I’m going to go draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa so it looks right. Those old Italian women all have hairy upper lips. The guy who painted it clearly did not know what he was doing, amirite? 
If you go back through my comment history, you may find a startling number of s immediately preceding the beginnings of new sentences… other embedded HTML, too.
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Yes, because that’s what the designer and the rest of the traditional publishing apparatus — the proof-readers, the editors, and all the rest — are paid to do.
I mean we could just photograph the typewritten manuscripts and publish those, but do you really want to read this:
instead of this?
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him. [etc]
Edit: Note that old George there, old school trained journalist and all, apparently didn’t type any period-double-space in his manuscript.
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That is literally what I do for a living.
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Alas, this is the problem. If you’re planning on, let’s pluck a random example from the air, voting in an election, it’s up to you to resolve the issues, not to just go with the presets and not bother to do any of the reading.
There are two acute accents in résumé.
Yes. That is what a typesetter does. A writer’s content consists of the writing, not how it is presented. That is why things like TeX and CSS exist.
With some exceptions, writing is not a visual art.
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Man, Track Changes sure has improved since then.
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Also, you’re just going crazy with those man. How many did you really need after “lips”?
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Some sites are fussy enough that this involves nontrivial vivisection; but the ability to override the site’s preferred stylesheet with your own can be a beautiful thing indeed.
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Fair enough, but formatting text exactly the way I want it, is literally what I do for a living.
And in my case, it isn’t a matter of it “not looking right” - if I make a single character mistake, or if I use a tab character instead of spaces, it literally does not work; things break, people suffer.
It seems to me what modern web design (or UX if you prefer) ignores physical characteristics of the human visual apparatus and the capabilities of the human brain in order to follow absurd stylistic visions based on whimsy. This whole thread is about that - grey on grey websites are a commonplace horror, just look at wordpress templates.
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I don’t go around changing things that I’m not asked to change. It just sounded odd that changing someone else’s content was never OK.
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Huh. Sez you. I have had a few “deeply weird” moments in my life, but not once have I ever stumbled over sentences divided like that. I read a lot and I see sentences divided both ways, and I know which way I prefer. If it was “deeply weird” not only would it be rarer, but people bitching about it would be even louder. The spatial inconsistencies caused by justified margins bother me a lot more.
Alas, I wish all amps still came with presets. I recently obtained a pretty good surround amp from my brother, and I’m still stuck with the level setup from his living room, since he seems to have misplaced the little microphone you’re supposed to use to set the surround levels, and I can’t seem to adjust them properly without it.
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If double-spaces or the lack of them make no difference to you, then what’s up with injecting your non-opinion into it? Personally, I am terribly unfussy about speakers and amps and all that audiophile stuff, but I don’t go around critiquing your quest for perfect audio just because I’m indifferent to it.
'Cause “deeply weird” and “looks wrong” are subjective opinions, and every now and then it pleases me to remind people.
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And therein lies wisdom <grin™>.
I’m not trying to attack your or @Nelsie’s profession or the service you provide to people who want editing and formatting, but I am pretty annoyed by presentation layers that do it automatically and unavoidably. It’s stupid when egalitarian designs that can work optimally for every/any-one are derided as bad design, and things designed for a limited group of fully abled young people are lauded.
While my Dad was dying of a laundry list of ailments, he wanted to use Amazon to buy his grandchildren things for their birthdays. Unfortunately he could not read the screens or operate the add-ons necessary to make it readable to him. But he could have done it if the UX was less fashionable.
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Because indifference is still a valid position on the matter, and reflects what many of us may feel.
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I’m with you. I try to keep readability and usability of anything I work on as primary design goals — when those have any bearing on the project — and try to keep “fashion” from getting in the way of those.
Note that some clients want fashionable designs or other quirky illegibilities; it’s not always the designer’s idea. As a designer you can argue against it until you’re blue in the face (or fired), but if the client is adamant, you’re stuck with it.
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