Thunderbird Composition

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This is an OLD problem through SEVERAL versions of Thunderbird and I’ve tried searching at Mozilla and can’t find anything. Maybe my search term is awry!

Every once in awhile when I’m composing a new email message of multiple paragraphs, I get to the end of a sentence and enter a period (stop). When I start to type the next sentence, Thunderbird inserts a “carriage return” and starts my new sentence there. I have to go back up to where my sentence ended and hit DELETE to get the new sentence in its proper place.

Has anyone run into this and possibly know what’s wrong – a stray setting on my part or a (shudder) long-time software bug?

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*Never* had that problem – but then I double-space at the end of every sentence. HTH

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*Never* had that problem – but then I double-space at the end of every sentence. HTH

Malcolm, speaking as a writer and something of a font afficionado, I can tell you that double spacing after periods is an unfortunate holdover from the days of monospaced typewriters. With proportional type, it is both unnecessary and ugly. If you can retrain yourself to do a single space after periods, the results will look that much better. This is especially true if you do any justified text.

Sometimes, the most practical way to notice this is to stand back from your text a little beyond convenient focus range–and see the “rivers” of white space running through it from the extra-large spaces between sentences.

I learned to type many, many years ago (I am 60) on manual typewriters, but I also retrained myself to do single spaces after periods not long after accessible computers with proportional spacing came along. (The hardest habit to break was hitting the keys very strongly as we had to do with manual typewriters. That kind of muscle memory is very difficult to change!)

David

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