[texhax] Correcting for math-mode kerning before commas and periods?

Uwe Lück uwe.lueck at web.de
Sun Oct 16 14:34:14 CEST 2005


At 11:26 16.10.05, geolsoft at mail.ru wrote:
>On Fri, Oct 14, 2005 at 06:05:26AM -0700, Alexander McCormmach wrote:
> > Is there any way to define a command which, when placed either just
> > before the period (or comma) or just inside the final "$", will
> > un-hskip or un-kern the unwanted space that TeX is inserting?
>
>I've checked several non-TeX math books, and they all have
>italics correction in such cases (one of the books is by
>Addison-Wesley dated 1976, so it must be reliable).  My
>guess is that this is actually the tradition to put italics
>correction here, maybe to avoid mistaking punctuation for
>being part of the formula.  Does anyone have any idea about
>this?  (Of course, even if this is so, the problem of
>eliminating the kern is still there, maybe for cases when
>math mode is used for something other than math).

Thanks a lot, I guess you are right. And this made me think
and try:

(i) Maybe $f.$ is the solution!? If you try it, it doesn't conform
to that tradition as well as $f$.

(ii) When a sentence ends on a displayed equation, you cannot
avoid putting a dot at its end -- inside the math environment.
Now, on screen $f.$ and $$f.$$ seemed to differ with respect
to the distance between f and dot, but \showlists shows that
they are the same.

So if you want that ending sentences on math environments
is consistent, $f.$ would do. (Or do something like $$f\,.$$)
However, `We arrive at $f=0.1.$'  isn't nice (I guess this is
the reason for that tradition).

Best,
Uwe L.



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