A recent Tweet about the pilcrow, that backward-P mark to indicate the end of paragraphs, reminded me of a piece I wrote a while ago answering someone who wanted to know why people used indented paragraphs with no space between lines and two spaces after a period, suggesting it was all due to newspapers.
Indented paras with no space between, yes that’s newspaper style, but two spaces after a period? Only in very amateurish newspapers which do not realize that in most fonts the extra space is built in with the actual dot at the left hand end of the glyph.
Spacing between paragraphs is quite common in newspapers when text is set ragged right, either as a style or for special features. And paragraph spacing is a common ploy to make stories fit.
I didn't know that that was called a pilcrow?!
Posted by: Kari Gulbrandsen | July 17, 2009 at 11:30 PM