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Showing content from https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2016-May/144687.html below:

[Python-Dev] Why does PEP 7/8 explicitly suggest 2 spaces after a period?

[Python-Dev] Why does PEP 7/8 explicitly suggest 2 spaces after a period?Stephen J. Turnbull stephen at xemacs.org
Sat May 21 03:44:20 EDT 2016
Bernardo Sulzbach writes:
 > > On 05/20/2016 09:27 AM, Brett Cannon wrote:
 > >
 > > The period is a full-stop punctuation mark, but visually obscure [1].
 > 
 > It is small. This does not make it hard to notice, however.

That depends on fonts, and on the ability of the user to write
correctly as well.  "Syntax should not look like grit on Tim's screen"
applies to natural language as well.  I read a lot of English-as-a-
second-language text, and it really does help to have the extra space,
because the period often appears where English grammar suggests it
doesn't belong.  The extra effort to use the second space helps to
emphasize the author's intent, and even subjectively make the period
"more visible".

But I agree with Guido.  No Python contributors write poorly, so the
real issues are consistency with past practice (a minor consideration
in the case of comments) and tooling (since both Emacs and vim seem to
come out of the box believing in this rule, I guess it's widespread
enough to care).

As for Brett's concern about whether this should be specified at this
level, I think tooling again is an answer.  Emacs reflows whole
paragraphs.  That means that text that is off-screen may be changed
according to this rule, and that is an annoyance when you only notice
it while preparing a patch for submission.  I think a detail of style
that triggers unwanted (but plausible[1]) behavior in a widely-used
tool is worth standardizing.  Sometimes, of course, you standardize
*despite* the tool, but then at least the tool-users know that a
decision has been taken to impose the burden on them, vs. imposing the
burden on people who prefer the other style.

Footnotes: 
[1]  If the behavior is implausible, fix the tool, of course!

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