From: Jeffrey Schwab <jeff@...>
Date: 2005-12-01T01:22:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Splitting a text file into sentences

Austin Ziegler wrote:
> On 11/29/05, Kevin Olbrich <kevin.olbrich@duke.edu> wrote:
> 
>>Depending on the text you might be able to search for a period (or other
>>punctuation) followed by two spaces.  It's not robust, but if you know that
>>convention will be followed by the authors, then it can work.
> 
> 
> That, in fact, is a very *bad* metric to follow, as the proper spacing
> after sentence punctuation is a single space. The only reason that two
> spaces was used in the past is the space used between sentence endings
> in typeset work is a little wider than that used between words (an
> em-space vs. an en-space).
> 

Not true at all.  I was always taught to use double spaces after 
sentences in grade-school homework assignments done on plain word 
processors or typewriters.