Comments on: How to get LaTeX to ignore a period for spacing purposes?

Question: How to get LaTeX to ignore a period for spacing purposes?

yesno — Mon, 09 May 2005 18:36:18 -0800

Sometimes in LaTeX I notice bad-looking rivers after the period in someone's title, such as "Mr. Jones" or "St. Thomas." I assume that this is because it is treated the "." in things like "St." as if they are sentence stops, and spacing them accordingly. How can I get this to stop?

By: Galvatron

Galvatron — Mon, 09 May 2005 18:58:11 -0800

You need to backslash-escape the space, e.g. "Mr.\ Jones".

By: Galvatron

Galvatron — Mon, 09 May 2005 19:04:31 -0800

Depending on your preference, the tilde may be a better solution ("Mr.~Jones")--this inserts a literal space just like "\ " does, but also prevents a linebreak from falling between the two words.

By: netsirk

netsirk — Mon, 09 May 2005 21:13:47 -0800

I'm always interested in seeing answers to questions when I have no idea what the question even means! LaTeX? rivers? wheeeeeeeeeee!

By: undecided

undecided — Mon, 09 May 2005 21:29:06 -0800

Me too, netsirk!
FYI, LaTeX is a powerful typesetting language popular in academia. "River" usually refers to a vertical run of whitespaces that are aligned on the page in a distracting manner, but yesno seems to be talking about a single overly-large gap.

By: fatllama

fatllama — Mon, 09 May 2005 23:40:24 -0800

For completion, negative space can be intersted in math mode with \! .