[OS X TeX] overview of what TeX is producing

Doug Fields dfields-macosx-tex-0205 at pexicom.com
Wed Mar 2 15:20:18 CET 2005


> That is something I have been wondering about. According to the 
> American
> way, one a combination of quoting and a period comes out like this:
>
>     It was a matter of `live and let live.'
>
> While the IMO more logical way would be
>
>     It was a matter of `live and let live'.

As a highly logical person, I agree with what you say above from a 
logical standpoint.

That said, as an American writer, I almost always follow the "standard 
convention" to which you refer, and "end my quotes with terminal 
punctuation enclosed."

I've always figured that a typesetting system like this (LaTeX) would 
kern them, either way, to produce output which essentially looks like 
the period and close quotes are overlapped.

> Because the ! is part of the quote and the . ends the sentence. Think:
>
>     He shouted: `Boy, this is hot!' and ran away.

This would be considered by many (myself included) to be incorrect, as 
"and ran away" is now a sentence fragment. Of course, if you're Stephen 
Wolfram, you'd say that was a perfectly valid, normal sentence (c.f. A 
New Kind of Science).

> Anyway that is not important, but it does seem in your text that the 
> quote
> in the middle of the sentence is seen as the end of a sentence.
>
>    `Oh, I've had such a curious dream!'   said Alice.

I read a command in the "not so short introduction to LaTeX 2e" which 
would allow you to tell it that the preceding terminal character should 
not be treated as an end of sentence. I don't recall it off the top of 
my head, but I remember it being used in an example such as having a 
period after an acronym (such as BASIC. and the sentence continues).

Cheers,

Doug

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