05-11-2011, 06:43 AM | #1 |
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Want double-space between sentences
Hi, new to the forum, and pretty new to ebooks too.
I'm using Sigil (wonderful tool, by the way!) to edit some epub documents, and I'm trying to find a way to retain my double-spacing between sentences. (Peace to all you folks who prefer single spaces after punctuation. My eyes have been reading for over 60 years, and the combination of old habit, and old eyes that need lots of white space lead me to my wish for two spaces after sentences.) I found a lot of threads about vertical white space (spacing between paragraphs), but found very little info about horizontal spacing between sentences after punctuation. I tried Non-Breaking Spaces, but Sigil collapses them to a single space when I save the file. The Calibre viewer displays a single space. Is there a workaround to force Sigil to respect my double spaces? I don't really know HTML, but if someone can suggest any solution, I would be more than grateful. |
05-11-2011, 07:58 AM | #2 |
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Is there an em space option? If so, try that.
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05-11-2011, 10:25 AM | #3 |
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surely inserts 2 spaces.
I've seen indents done that was, in coversions & they work. in code view <p>sentence. nextsentence. l ast sentence</p> should work.. yep works as expected. now if you want to force that throughout an existing book we;ll have to get into using find/replace. a find/replace option could detect a full stop followed by a single space followed by a Capital letter, and repalce that with full stop , 2 x nbsp, folloed by the original capital letter. something like find \. ([A_Z]) replace . \1 find replace options: match case, regex, all files, replace all.. you should be able to type as you go, in book view, but it seems bugged. I get one space left in , for every two spacebar presses. so you can type in multiple spaces, just have to type twice as many as you really want. e.g. in a new sigil document I generated this html by pressing space bar 4 times between each word as I typed the line in book view Code:
<p>here is a new test.</p> Code:
<p>and one more with tidy on.</p> |
05-11-2011, 01:32 PM | #4 | ||
frumious Bandersnatch
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Quote:
Quote:
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05-11-2011, 01:53 PM | #5 |
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sure - but the OP wants double spaces between all of sentences.
I think I've shown 1. if typing your own book, how to add them as you go. 2. if the book is already written, how to add them after the event as a single automated edit.. he said nothing about justification - maybe he'll left justify everything - who knows. Mr Smith & St. John would need a manual patch up, or live with the double spaces. do you agree though that having to hit space bar x 4 in order togenerate 2 x &nbs;: is a bug ? PS I was unable to reproduce this claim from OP "I tried Non-Breaking Spaces, but Sigil collapses them to a single space when I save the file." |
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05-12-2011, 01:30 AM | #6 | |
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Quote:
And yes, i have to confess that sometimes i'm lazy and using nbsp as text indentation Last edited by huebi; 05-12-2011 at 06:16 AM. |
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05-12-2011, 06:13 AM | #7 |
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Justification will mess up the double space, no question about that. If left alignment is used, the double should work. However, I would not be surprised when reader would ignore that.
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05-12-2011, 06:16 AM | #8 |
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In most cases, im using justify, not left. And still have the same amount of nbsps in the code before saving.
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05-12-2011, 06:28 AM | #9 |
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Wow, thanks for all the speedy responses, this is SO not like what I am used to. I'm sorry to be so late replying, but my workplace pc blocks me from the login, so I will only be able to post to MobileRead from the computers at the local library. This is the first time this has happened to me, and I participate in a number of forums.
Now I must apologise, I think I confused myself while trying out different text formats and etcetera. I believe it may have been using CALIBRE to CONVERT the files (to PDB format) that collapses my double-spacings. So I will have to carefully experiment and take notes of the results, and then go post in the correct sub-forum if that is indeed what happened. You folks have given me some useful bits of information that I will certainly use in future. Yes, my documents all do already have double-spacing after punctuation. I either type them that way, or use search & replace to get them that way, followed by Word macros to clean out the abbreviations, like Mr. and Mrs. I get the feeling that I am definitely in a minority who want this kind of layout. I'll be back to report results. Thanks again to all of you, you friendly people !!!! |
05-24-2011, 06:11 PM | #10 |
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I realize that years ago, one was told in typing class to put two spaces after each full stop. But that has gone the way of quill pens. Why try to make your book look quaint?
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05-28-2011, 09:42 AM | #11 |
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In typing class there was a good reason for it. All except the most expensive typewriters were monospace, and you really need that extra space for your eye to pick out the beginning of a sentence.
Since monospace type is now a rarity, that's no longer necessary -- proportional space text already adds more space after a period. Not a full second space, but more. Typesetters had been doing this for centuries -- it was only the limitations of those old typewriters that made the second space "the standard." We've canonized a workaround. I confess my fingers automatically hit two spaces at the end of a sentence, but in most cases it doesn't matter since most of the text I type is in formats (html, TeX, etc.) that ignore extra space and "do the right thing." |
05-28-2011, 10:47 AM | #12 | |
frumious Bandersnatch
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Quote:
The reason is that traditionally English typesetting has used more space between sentences than normally between words. That's OK, but in monospace fonts (as in typewriters), the only way to have more than a single space is having two spaces. In more advanced typesetting systems (like TeX) there are ways to specify where a sentence ends and how much additional space there should be. In HTML and similar there is, as far as I know, no such way. But that's probably good, because it's one of those things, like hyphenation, that you have to set and check manually if you want it to be correct, and it looks really sloppy if it's wrong. |
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double-space, sentence-spacing |
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