This is deeply fascinating - for me, and many people I have talked to about the issue, single spaces after a full-stop cause innattentive reading, as they skim across sentence aftre sentence and find they have reached the end of a paragraph without actually taking in the substance of the text.

Additionally, there is no apparent aesthetic or utilitarian benefit to the single space system.  As pointed out above, the '.' is used in so many ways now that the end of sentence needs to have a clear indication over and above the dot.  A single space just doesn't cut it, even if we leave out words starting with a dot.  As a quick example, I have put this paragraph in twice - it is nothing out of the ordinary as a piece of text - and would welcome honest opinions on which looks and reads better.

Additionally, there is no apparent aesthetic or utilitarian benefit to the single space system. As pointed out above, the '.' is used in so many ways now that the end of sentence needs to have a clear indication over and above the dot. A single space just doesn't cut it, even if we leave out words starting with a dot. As a quick example, I have put this paragraph in twice - it is nothing out of the ordinary as a piece of text - and would welcome honest opinions on which looks and reads better.

I can see where the sentences are in the first version at a glance - the 'bullet holes' mentioned.  But then I want to be able to get meaning out of text when I read it, and knowing how far I am about to read in one go helps this process.  The double spaced version is less threatening, because I can see that it comes in distinct parts.  Perhaps it would be different if the sentences didn't all start with 'A'.