aracter of the first span and the first character of the second span in
sequence, so it is always independent of the order of the two span.</p>
<p>This is negative if the spans overlap.</p>
<p>Note: this can be called with an Annotation or AnnotationSet instead of <code>start</code> and <code>end</code>
(see gatenlp._utils.support_annotation_or_set)</p>
<h2 id="args">Args</h2>
<dl>
<dt><strong><code>start</code></strong></dt>
<dd>start offset of span</dd>
<dt><strong><code>end</code></strong></dt>
<dd>end o