RE: line adjustment at the end of a sentence

["Ludwig, Mark" <ludwig.mark@siemens.com>]

> From: Tom Kramer
> Sent: Wednesday, September 26, 2012 7:01 AM
> To: T.F. Torrey
> Cc: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org
> Subject: Re: line adjustment at the end of a sentence
> 
> Hello Terry -
> 
> Thank you very much. I have put (setq sentence-end-double-space nil)
> into my .emacs file and restarted emacs. The problem is solved as best I
> can tell. The sample paragraph I submitted now gets set exactly the way
> I prefer. The double spaces between sentences have also always annoyed
> me, so setting sentence-end-double-space to nil gets two birds with one
> stone.
> 
> Tom Kramer

The number of spaces between English sentences has been gradually switching from two to one.  (The style guide I used in college certainly required two spaces between sentences.  I wonder if newer style guides have changed to one space between sentences.)  It's good that this is configurable in Emacs, because I'm annoyed by the use of one space, as I feel it adds further ambiguity to the written language where there is already more than enough ambiguity to make understanding challenging.  Why are you annoyed by two spaces between sentences?  I'd think one's eye would just skip right over the extra space.

With 30+ years of EMACS/Emacs experience, and a love for two spaces between sentences, I've always been impressed by the way it handles "Dr. Watson" and similar uses of a single space that is not the end of a sentence.  I suppose my love for this is because of the ease with which one can act on sentences in Emacs.  I frequently use M-k (kill-sentence) in my comments in code (usually when I want to reorder the sentences).

Cheers,
Mark