inter-sentence

The inverse is not a problem: a typesetting system can just coalesce spacing and make its own inter-sentence spacing decisions.

In terms of ease of use, existing standards, and ready interpretation, a doubled space as an inter-sentence indicator has numerous benefits.

Two spaces is a sensible convention for distinguishing inter-word spaces from inter-sentence spaces.

As far as typesetting goes, TeX makes an inter-sentence space a bit wider (but less than 2x) than an inter-word space, unless you tell it otherwise.

Let's say I want to look at how inter-sentence objects work in two languages.

> with TeX's standard settings, the inter-sentence space has the same natural width as the inter-word space That's not quite accurate; the inter-sentence space does have a slightly larger natural width as well as more stretchability.

TeX, for instance, allows the space after sentences to stretch more than interword space, and gives inter-sentence space that is 1/3 wider than interword space where there is no space (default for CMR).

In fact, with TeX's standard settings, the inter-sentence space has the same natural width as the inter-word space; it's just that when justifying paragraphs it stretches more (3x) and shrinks less (0.33x) than the inter-word space — the net effect is that inter-sentence spaces are (usually) subtly larger.

Using two spaces between sentences happens to make it easier for typesetting software to automatically apply whatever magical 1+epsilon or 1-epsilon inter-sentence spacing it deems best, assuming the typesetting software can deduce that the author is using the two-space sentence convention (otherwise it has to fall back on heuristics, which are not perfect).

Having to keep track of which periods are ends of sentences is a bit inconvenient in the general case, which explains why wider inter-sentence spacing was given up first in newspapers, then low-quality mass-publishing, then finally high-quality printing as well (almost).

And they have to navigate this subject at many levels at the same time, either inter-sentence or inter-paragraph; now I am talking about X, but not the X you think [the writer anticipates] but the X in itself.

Or you could conveniently decide to follow the "french spacing" convention, in which inter-sentence spaces are the same size as inter-word spaces.

Despite it being called "double spacing", TeX's inter-sentence spacing is actually only about 1.25x the inter-word spacing (before justification stretching is applied, at least).

Smith." is inter-sentence is well beyond what fonts can do, however.

There are subjects which naturally lend themselves to “shifts” inter-sentence.