Article about the origins of white space?

November 17, 2006 8:36 PM

I'm trying to find a great article I read a year or two ago about the origins of white space in written text--does this ring a bell for anyone?

It was a really interesting article--well-paced, informative, and awesomely free of the incoherence that chokes the throats of many similar articles with a kind of chunky obscurantist vomit. I thought for a long time that I first saw the piece on Arts & Letters Daily, but a search reveals nothing. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? Failing that, anything you can tell me about the origins of white space would be greatly appreciated. I seem to remember that monks had a hand in it, although I could be misremembering.

posted by Powerful Religious Baby to writing & language (6 comments total)

Here's a transcript of an interview with Paul Saenger who wrote a book on the subject in 2000.

According to him, spaces and "interpuncts" (dots between words) begin in Europe with Irish monks in the 7th century (possibly inspired by Syriac manuscripts they had seen) and only gradually spread. He says the spread of this innovation allows an intellectual revolution.

One of the things he says is that silent reading only became possible once there were separations between written words. The idea is that writing without spaces more naturally represents actual speech, where we don't have a strict separation between words, and is only easily understandable when read aloud.

And here's a link to discussion of same on the blog of Metafilter's own Language Hat.
posted by LobsterMitten at 11:28 PM on November 17, 2006

Er, his book was written in 1997. The interview was in 2000. Language Hat covered it in 2003. Now it's 2006! The three-year cycle of interest continues!

Here's the wikipedia article based on Saenger's book, interword separation.

Here is the publisher's page about it.

Here are a few other reviews of the same book:
Canadian Journal of History
Ranums' Panat Times
H-net Humanities and Social Sciences
posted by LobsterMitten at 12:16 AM on November 18, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Old Clavdivs had something to do with dots -- long before the 7th century.
posted by popcassady at 3:13 AM on November 18, 2006

Thanks, LobsterMitten! The article was probably a review of that book, or possibly an excerpt. The idea that silent reading became possible only when spacing was introduced really struck me at the time.

popcassady, the wikipedia link says that "Claudius also tried to revive the old custom of putting dots between different words." I wonder where that custom originated?
posted by Powerful Religious Baby at 10:04 AM on November 18, 2006

Spaces between words resemble somewhat the place-holder function of zero in modern arabic numerals, to which I have seen attributed the great superiority of the arabic system. I wonder if one could have given rise to the other?
posted by jamjam at 1:16 PM on November 18, 2006

Sorry, jamjam, I didn't see your answer--anyway, I'm hoping Saenger's book will tell me whether or not that idea is plausible, as it occurred to me as well.
posted by Powerful Religious Baby at 8:21 PM on November 20, 2006