Re: OT: Punctuation

Trebor Jung wrote:
>
> In different posts, I notice the following:
> My name is...
> My name is ...
> My name is . . .
> Is it a matter of choice, or are there rules governing
> spacing and punctuation...
In typesetting, the ellipsis is spaced with "thin spaces."
That means 4-to-em or 5-to-em spaces. In the old days,
when authors wrote their material on fixed width type-
writers, they did not space out the ellipsis. That looks
correct because the periods have a lot of space around
them. They then handed the copy to a specially trained
person for typesetting. This person knew to use the
proper spacing.

In more recent years, the author wrote his text on a
computer terminal (remember those?), and the text
was sent to the typesetting machine directly, so there
was no spacing. This continues today. Many national
periodicals use ellipses with no spaces.

(If the text ends a sentence, there is a period, then the
ellipsis:  My name is Bill. . . .   or My name is Bill. ...  )


> Which leads to my next question: In French, you write:
> [How are you ?]
> [I'm fine !]
>
> But in English you write:
> How are you?
> I'm fine!
>
> Where does the practice of separating punctuation from the sentence come
from?

This was common in book publishing in English about
one hundred years ago. An extra 3-to-em space was
placed before {?} and {!} and inside quotation marks.

When doing metal typesetting, I usually place a one-point
space before {?} and {!}.

Spacing has changed over the years. I noticed in a book
printed in 1740 that almost all spaces between words
were em-quads. Today 3-to-em or 4-to-em is normal.

--Ph. D.