[latexrefman-discuss] Add node on syntax of commands

[Karl Berry]

    Semester ended.

Congratulations.

    I'm going to work through the alt-latex-info and see how I do.  

Fantastic, thanks.

    How many columns do you set the paragraphs to?  emacs's default is 70
    but do you do 72?  

Yes, I do 72 (for 30+ years now -- I'd long forgotten it wasn't the
default :).

    In addition, I personally prefer not to end sentences in a colon,

To my brain, the : is not ending the sentence.  The list (or example) is
ending the sentence.  It's like a sentence that says inline: a) this,
and b) that.  Just with different formatting.

I often find the : form more readable than the . form, because the :
clearly leads the reader on to the following items or example, while the
. makes them feel more independent (when they're not).

Admittedly the list items themselves are often sentences, in which case
the colon is wrong grammatically, but I'm not sure that always changing
the "prefatory" statement to end with a period is better for the reader.
For instance, in this case:

! Additional packages are loaded like this:
  
  @example
  \usepackage[@var{options}]@{@var{pkg}@}
  @end example

I think the reader is worse off with a period.  The \usepackage
statement is not a sentence on its own.

Anyway, enough theorizing, anything works :).


Thanks as always.

k