Quote:
Originally Posted by redwitch
I blame the court system. At first, briefs were limited to a certain page length. Once we legal secretaries learned how to manipulate a computer so that we could add our attorneys' extra five pages to fit the limited length, the courts went to word length. Well, a word was considered five characters regardless of length. Two spaces added several words and, thus, one space it was.
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Here's what the linked article states:...Here’s why: Back when we used typewriters, every character was given the exact same amount of space on the page. That meant the letter i was given the same amount of space as the letter m, even though it clearly didn’t need it. This is called monospaced typesetting and it’s, well, spacey. We needed that extra space between sentences to make it easier to see the beginning of new sentences.
Word processors and computers and everything that is not a very old typewriter use mostly proportionally spaced fonts, which adjust spacing to the size of the letter...