[Originally Appeared 1999.]
Also, many of you corrected my statement in Word of Law No. 12 about the spacing Word inserts after a period or stop. Several pointed out that in both mono and proportionally spaced type, the spacing is the same as a word space. There should be some extra spacing, such as the space occupied by an “n-dash.” An n-dash is longer than a single space.
The various teams at Microsoft differ in their approach. The text that the newsletter wizard includes in the sample templates uses single spaces after periods. A fun way to generate sample text for testing and demonstration purposes (mention in WOW previously) is to type “=rand(2,2)” in an empty paragraph, then press the ENTER key. Word will produce the following text:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
Word automatically inserted two spaces after the periods. The (2,2) in the command above can be replaced by other numbers, where the first is the number of paragraphs and the second is the number of sentences in each paragraph. There are limits, but I have not tested them.
Following Microsoft’s lead, perhaps this issue is best left as “we agree to disagree.”
This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.