[PLUG] Emacs Text Editing Question

[Rich Shepard]

On Fri, 25 Mar 2016, Ali Corbin wrote:

> I've noticed this too, but only when I've pasted text into Emacs. My trick
> is to add a second space after the period.

Ali,

   Interesting. This text is not pasted in the document, but I'll try a
second space and see what happens.

> Now I went to school in the dark ages, and was taught to put two spaces
> between sentences.

   I, too, took notes in cuniiform on clay tablets. The
two-speces-after-a-period arose with monospaced characters on typewriters.
With all other typefaces a single space suffices.

> I presume that Emacs is of the same vintage, and has somehow decided that
> dot-single-space isn't really a word separator. But I'm sure there's a
> setting you can change if you prefer single spaces between sentences.

   Looks reasonable, but does not happen in all cases. The seemingly random
decision to leave an extra long space at the end of the line is the
question.

Many thanks,

Rich