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better documentation for ending a sentence


From: Paul Eggert
Subject: better documentation for ending a sentence
Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2012 18:02:27 -0800
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Thunderbird/17.0

Here's a proposed patch to make the Texinfo manual clearer
about when sentences end.

2012-11-24  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>

        * doc/texinfo.txi (Not Ending a Sentence): Document the
        sentence-ending heuristic more clearly.  This follows up on a
        request by Eli Zaretskii in <http://bugs.gnu.org/12973#14>.

Index: doc/texinfo.txi
===================================================================
RCS file: /sources/texinfo/texinfo/doc/texinfo.txi,v
retrieving revision 1.493
diff -b -u -r1.493 texinfo.txi
--- doc/texinfo.txi     24 Nov 2012 00:45:19 -0000      1.493
+++ doc/texinfo.txi     25 Nov 2012 01:55:34 -0000
@@ -10716,21 +10716,23 @@
 @cindex Sentence non-ending punctuation
 @cindex Periods, inserting
 @cindex Spacing, in the middle of sentences
-Depending on whether a period or exclamation point or question mark is
-inside or at the end of a sentence, slightly less or more space is
-inserted after a period in a typeset manual.  Since it is not always
-possible to determine automatically when a period ends a sentence,
-special commands are needed in some circumstances.  Usually, Texinfo
-can guess how to handle periods, so you do not need to use the special
-commands; you just enter a period as you would if you were using a
-typewriter: put two spaces after the period, question mark, or
-exclamation mark that ends a sentence.
+Texinfo normally inserts slightly more space after the end of a
+sentence in a typeset manual.  When doing so, it uses a simple
+heuristic: a sentence ends with any period or exclamation point or
+question mark followed by optional closing punctuation, if the end of
+sentence is followed by whitespace and is not preceded by a capital
+letter.  (Closing punctuation includes closing quotes, parentheses,
+brackets, and braces---for example, this sentence ends after the
+parenthesis at the end of this parenthetical remark.)  Although this
+heuristic lets Texinfo guess how to handle sentences so you typically
+do not need to use special commands, it sometimes goes wrong and
+special commands are needed.
 
 @findex <colon> @r{(suppress end-of-sentence space)}
 Use the @code{@@:}@: command after a period, question mark,
 exclamation mark, or colon that should not be followed by extra space.
-For example, use @code{@@:}@: after periods that end abbreviations
-which are not at the ends of sentences.
+For example, use @code{@@:}@: after periods that end lower-case
+abbreviations which are not at the ends of sentences.
 
 Also, when a parenthetical remark in the middle of a sentence (like
 this one!)@: ends with a period, exclamation point, or question mark,



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