Talk:Sentence spacing

Move Digital age to HIstory?

Currently a good chunk of the Digital age section is just pushing one viewpoint. It opens with an opinion quote, and one that leans heavily on the incorrect typewriter myth. I could just dig in and fix this, but I see a larger issue here, that much of the "digital age" is just about history now. I'd like to add some information on computerized phototypesetting from the sixties and seventies and issues there with sentence spacing, which is obviously history. Troff was originally written in 1976 I think, and it's handling for sentences had changed over time. Even TeX has been around long enough to get coverage in history. The web hasn't been around for long, but long enough to see changes over time in how it handles spacing.

So I'm thinking that either the entire section could be rewritten and moved to History, or that History could be generally expanded, and this section could just be renamed "Modern digital usage" or "current digital practices" or something like that. I would like to have more on current practices, e.g. a recent change to twitter to preserve spaces; what Word does; and the iOS and Android use of two spaces to detect sentences and add periods.

I guess I"m not fully satisfied with any of the options for rearrangement so if anybody has any bright ideas, please let us know. Battling McGook (talk) 21:55, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Identifying Abbreviations

The additional space also helps distinguish abbreviations, especially in names and titles. For example, "Security is a vital concern in the U.S. Marines will defend our nation." If only there was a way to tell the sentence ended after U.S., maybe some kind of standardized spacing. Software is especially sensitive, not knowing whether a sentence just ended or if an abbreviation took place. ~ Agvulpine (talk) 10:51, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Add smartphone shortcut info to Digital Age section?

On most (perhaps all?) modern smartphones, a double-space is the standard shortcut to automatically end a sentence--the software adds a period, spaces, and defaults the first letter of the next word/sentence to be capitalized. While I have no specific source for this, I find it fairly obvious that the reason this was chosen to be the shortcut is because of how much of the population uses doublespaces between sentences. It seems this would be worth covering in the Digital Age section of this entry. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.160.115.225 (talk) 21:45, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Majority of style guides

So what exactly constitutes a reliable source? I do see several sources where people claim that the majority of modern style guides support single spaced sentences, but I do not see any basis for this claim. That is, none of these people are referrring to any comprehensive review of style guides. And many of these same sources have been clearly unreliable on other issues, for instance the incorrect claim that wide sentence spacing was invented for the typewriter. So if a source is making claims with no references, and making other claims which are clearly identifiable as false, do we stop pretending that they are a reliable source?

As far as the issue at hand, I think it is more fair to say that the most popular style guides support single spacing, but not the majority. In fact, I believe that within the sciences, the majority of guides make no mention whatsoever about sentence spacing, and in practice allow any spacing. Most social sciences rely on APA which allows or encourages wider sentence spacing. The Modern Language Association allows it. I suspect the claim only has a hope of being true if the style guides are limited to mainstream commercial publishers' guides. Battling McGook (talk) 16:02, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Leeway on Reliable Sources

I've just restored the Heraclitean River article as a source on this article.

Yes I know wikipedia policy, but it also allows leeway. The article on Heraclitean River is widely cited on this topic, sometimes by sources that Wikipedia would consider reliable. The article provides many sources for its conclusions, unlike books that are readily accepted as reliable sources, even though it is trivial to demonstrate that the unsourced opinions in those books are false. (For example, any source that claims wide spacing was created for the typewriter, which covers the majority of sources).

The best sources on this topic that are available right now are blogs. Yes, this is my opinion. But it is an opinion that is backed up by blogs that provide lots of references versus books that offer nothing more than hand-waving. If we blindly reject blogs and blindly use books, we are dooming this article to be extremely biased. Battling McGook (talk) 17:10, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, but we'll need to see some evidence of what you're claiming. That blog doesn't cite any sources, and a cursory library search doesn't reveal any scholarly books or journals that cite it. Please do not re-add this link without establishing consensus here and proving that it meets WP:RS. --Laser brain (talk) 19:10, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

You say "That blog doesn't cite any sources". You have so completely failed to read the article in question at all that it is absurd. This is a small selection of sources mentioned:

* (The History and Art of Printing (London, 1771):.http://books.google.com/books?id=kkI5AAAAMAAJ&dq=spacing%20%22full%20point%22&pg=PA396#v=onepage&q&f=false

* (The Compositor’s and Pressman’s Guide to the Art of Printing, London, 1808, p. 10)

* (Charles Partington, The Printer’s Complete Guide, London, 1825, p. 207)

* (Cornelius Van Winkle, The Printers’ Guide, New York, 1836, pp. 135–136)

* (Theodore Gazlay, The Practical Printers’ Assistant, Cincinnati, 1836, p. 22)

* (Thomas Ford, The Compositor’s Handbook, London, 1854, p. 36)

* (Thomas MacKellar, The American Printer, Philadelphia, 1866, p. 113)

That's an INCOMPLETE list of sources he uses, that I found in almost no time just scanning the article. Compare that to, for example, the Bringhurst book which is used here as if it were a reliable source. It offers zero references in connection with its false claims on the history of sentence spacing. If I can't restore the exceedingly well-sourced blog article, can I go through and remove all the books which provide no sources for their false history of sentence spacing? Because every single book that claims that wide spacing was created for the typewriter is not reliable. Battling McGook (talk) 19:43, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

That's not what I'm saying. The blog author is quoting from those sources, but he's not citing sources for the claims he's making. He's making arguments from the sources he's using, which is what we would call synthesis. That's fine if he is a recognized expert, but who is this? It's someone's blog. I could write a blog like that and why would you take me seriously? That's why we need evidence that other scholars take him seriously—i.e. citations to his blog article from scholarly books and refereed journals. --Laser brain (talk) 20:13, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

This is going too far. A central question is, what was standard sentence spacing before the typewriter. He quotes many sources that predate the typewriter, which all say that wide sentence spacing was standard. How is this synthesis? It's not—it's direct evidence. On the other hand, sources which claim an alternative view of history offer no sources at all. That's worse than synthesis, it's a fairly tale. In what possible sense is a source making a claim with no references at all better than a source making a claim and backing it up with lots of references?

As far as the identity, this is ultimately nothing more than an ad hominem attack. The identify of the person is irrelevant if the argument is made and can be verified. Battling McGook (talk) 22:10, 9 March 2016 (UTC)

Ah, no. Questioning the the authority of an author is not an ad hominem, possibly unless the author is in the room in which case they shouldn't be advocating for their blog posts to be linked in Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. The identity and credibility of an author is integral to determining if the source meets WP:RS. As for the content disagreement, I'm interested in hearing from other interested parties to see if we can work on a consensus. --Laser brain (talk) 02:08, 10 March 2016 (UTC)

The link should be removed. There's a reason why sources must meet Wikipedia's reliable source criteria. There are a ton of blogs out there that cite sources, some plenty of them. But if the blogger or the publisher uses or allows a bad methodology, the author could cherry pick sources to feed a bad conclusion, or employ any number of other methodological flaws. Also important is that this is a Featured Article. That means that the sources used should not be of suspect or questionable quality. Featured Article Criterion 1c states that a Featured Article uses "high-quality reliable sources" (my emphasis). Airborne84 (talk) 20:52, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

[Resetting the indent level so I don't go insane but this is a response to all of the above]

Here's what it comes down to. You are talking about general principles, and I am talking about a specific, very real case. In principle yes, blogs can abuse sources. And in principle we hope that books don't do this as badly (although I've encountered many problems with book sources on many different topics).

But in this very real case, the topic is a simple one in historic terms. Many sources repeat a story about wide spacing coming from the typewriter, which has not ever been supported by any historical evidence, and is in apparent conflict with any and all evidence that has actually been presented. On the other hand a few blog sources offer a different history, which is supported by at least some historical evidence. So in this case, we have story X, an often-repeated but pretty clearly wrong myth, and story Y, with evidence behind it.

There is a theoretical possibility that the blog sources are biased or one sided or cherry-picking. But in practice there is not anyone out there saying that at all on this topic. There is no side of the story that is refuting the blogs. Side X offers no evidence. Y offers some evidence. X does not refute Y at all. X does not offer responses to Y criticism. This is the context where you want to dump this blog as a reliable source. Not some general principle about blogs, but a real case where (in my opinion) any rational look at the sources would find this blog to be reliable. Battling McGook (talk) 21:21, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

If you're just looking for a reliable source saying that larger spacing predates the typewriter, that is no problem at all. If you read the lede and the section on history, this is already stated in the article. The blog is not uncovering a conspiracy theory. For example, James Felici is a notable author on typography, and in one of his online sources used in the article right now, he states: "the use of double spaces (or other exaggerated spacing) after a period is a typographic convention with roots that far predate the typewriter." If this is all you are trying to ensure is captured, it's already done, and with high-quality sources. Let's use those instead of using a blog that moves the article away from the Featured Article criteria, damaging, not enhancing the article. --Airborne84 (talk) 08:03, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

As a side note, you can outdent using this tool. --Airborne84 (talk) 08:03, 13 March 2016 (UTC)