{punctuation} is for questions involving the typesetting of punctuation marks. If your question relates to punctuation in particular document parts such as e.g. bibliography formatting or section formatting you should also add the appropriate tag for that topic.
47
votes
4answers
51k views
Why do the less than symbol (<) and the greater than symbol (>) appear wrong as upside down exclamation (¡) or question mark (¿)?
When typing < or > in LaTeX and compiling with pdflatex, the less than and greater than symbols appear at upside down exclamation points. I'm not in math mode.
59
votes
5answers
7k views
Dashes: - vs. – vs. —
This may or may not be a real TeX/LaTeX question but rather a general question on punctuation:
How are the different dashes - "-", -- "–" and --- "—" supposed to be used?
38
votes
1answer
6k views
Aligning numbers by decimal points in table columns
Let me begin by stating that I did google the answers (and I'll reference to them soon). Yet each of the resources I found discussed one particular method, I'm interested in a comparison of the ...
13
votes
1answer
1k views
biblatex: remove commas between last and first names in bibliography
I am new to biblatex, and I need to create a bibliography with the authors' names with last names followed by pure initials. Using the style=numeric, firstinits and terseinits options along with:
...
39
votes
3answers
6k views
Block quote with big quotation marks
How can I create a block quote enviroment with big quotation marks similar to the Cquote Template of Wikipedia?
Additionally it would be nice to place both quotation marks and quote in a colored box ...
18
votes
4answers
3k views
What is the best way to use quotation mark glyphs?
There are several types of quotation marks in the English language (and in other languages there are even more). There are also several ways in LaTeX to represent these. I have seen editors, that are ...
16
votes
3answers
4k views
biblatex: How to remove the parentheses around the year in authoryear style?
The standard authoryear style in biblatex puts parentheses around the year in the bibliography and no parentheses around in text citation years:
Smith 2011 shows ... (citation)
Smith, Joe ...
10
votes
4answers
757 views
Automatically convert quotations in the form of “abc” to become ``abc"
I did not know that latex had different symbol for opening and closing quotation marks. I've used it like "abc" every where and just realised that I really should have used ``abc". Is there anyway I ...
43
votes
4answers
4k views
\includegraphics: Dots in filename
\includegraphics cannot handle filenames that contain more than the one dot, separating the filename from the extension. Apparently it uses everything after the first dot as extension and then, of ...
19
votes
2answers
668 views
Is there a way to automatically change kerning between commas/full stops and footnote marks?
This question led to a new package:
fnpct
Following up on my question on the kerning of footnote marks after punctuation marks, I'd like to know if there is a way to achieve the kerning of ...
23
votes
3answers
2k views
Adequate hyphenation of words already containing a hyphen
Contrary to English, in German there are quite a few words containing a hyphen, e.g. "Arbeiter-Unfallversicherung" (workers' accident insurance). By default, (La)TeX will only break such words after ...
37
votes
2answers
3k views
Is a period after an abbreviation the same as an end of sentence period?
Does latex do anything special with periods? If so, is there a way to differentiate end-of-sentence periods from periods indicating abbreviation?
7
votes
2answers
585 views
Quotation with double quote and O results in Ö
I have an issue with the double quote in my quotation.
Using "OpenGL....." results in ÖpenGL... even with \"OpenGL... the result is the same.
Using \verb results in double quotes in a wrong font ...
13
votes
2answers
7k views
How to make a real apostrophe or single-quote in LaTeX
I am trying to incorporate programming examples in a LaTeX document.
The document renders nicely with pdflatex; however, the single quotes get transformed into U+2019, a right-single-quotation mark. ...
25
votes
1answer
692 views
When should I use intersentence spacing (`\@')?
I've got a sentence that ends on an acronym:
blah blah WORD. Next sentence blah
Running this through chktex, I'm informed that:
Warning 13 in ./file.tex line 9: Intersentence spacing (`\@') ...
20
votes
3answers
476 views
Should I include punctuation marks in \emph, or should I place those marks after the command?
I wonder if I should place punctuation marks directly after the \emph{} command, or should I include those marks within the curly brackets? Thus:
The languages only differ in their \emph{grammar}, ...
18
votes
2answers
3k views
number format in pgfplots axis
How can I change the type of the decimal/thousand separator from the american one to the european one? More precisely, I want:
"1000" to be written as is, instead of "1,000"
"0,1" instead of "0.1"
...
6
votes
4answers
3k views
How to add a dot after the section number?
I wonder is there any way to change the format of section numbering from 1.1 to 1.1. ? I know this is trivial, but I really need to add one more dot after the section number. Does anybody know how to ...
8
votes
2answers
406 views
xeCJK messes with punctuation
Neither a question nor really a complain, but I find I cannot use xeCJK in multilingual documents (in the present case French + English + Chinese), simply because it messes with the punctuation in the ...
14
votes
2answers
2k views
Remove colon in the caption of a figure if the caption is empty
One of my figures should not have a caption, only the normal numbering. To get this, I use this code:
\begin{wrapfigure}{l}{4cm}
\begin{center}
\includegraphics[width=3cm]{graphic.pdf}
...
9
votes
3answers
300 views
Punctuation in bibliography with multiple languages
In a document written in a given language (in my case French but it may not matter so much) I have a bibliography mixing entries in different languages (in this case French, English and German). I ...
26
votes
2answers
2k views
What's the advantage of using csquotes over using an editor's auto-replacement for "?
Many editors (TeXnicCenter, Texmaker, TeXworks, ...) offer auto-replacement of " by the desired form of quotation marks, be it `` and '' for English, "` and "' for German, or whatnot. Usually, I know ...
25
votes
2answers
640 views
Replace “quotes” with „quotes“?
I live in a funny part of the world where we're required to quote text like this: „quotes“ (note the difference between the opening and closing quote).
Is there an easy way to set up a LaTeX document ...
15
votes
1answer
723 views
fontspec with Helvetica breaks quotes
The usual quoting with `` and '' doesn't work anymore after including this (which also changes the engine to XeTeX):
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Helvetica}
They are just printed verbatim in ...
15
votes
4answers
489 views
Microtype and quote environment leads to different indent of first line
When the microtype package is loaded a quote environment which starts with punctuation marks is inconsistent "indented". The first line in the following minimal example is unaffected, i.e. at the same ...
7
votes
1answer
1k views
Punctuation in equations
My document will contain a lot of equations, and as usual in that case I would like to use "punctuation" in the equations, like commas, colons, periods/full stops, semicolons, etc.
Is there a special ...
11
votes
3answers
1k views
Detect beginning of a sentence in a macro for capitalization
Is it possible to make macros give different results at the beginning of a new sentence? Suppose that I want the macro "\secname" to write "Section" at the beginning of a new sentence, and "section" ...
7
votes
1answer
397 views
Punctuation marks in math mode in xetex/mathspec
I am using XeTeX and have the following short document:
\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{article}
\usepackage{amsmath,amsthm}
\usepackage[MnSymbol]{mathspec}
\usepackage[no-sscript]{xltxtra}
...
20
votes
4answers
391 views
How does TeX's mechanism for sorting out quotation marks work?
When I enter ``hello'' in TeX, it very nicely reformats it to some nicer version of "hello". The mechanism for this seems to be buried deep down in the depths of TeX (and I can't find it in my usual ...
11
votes
5answers
888 views
Ellipsis with a period/fullstop
While quoting how ellipsis should be used if few sentences are omitted in between. (ommissions are not clauses or words or phrases, but sentences). For example if there is a passage like: This is a ...
15
votes
2answers
2k views
Should one use thousands separators in equations?
I understand that this is not strictly a TeX question but I have recently been asked to correct an equation presented as the first example in the image below to that of the second example i.e., to use ...
8
votes
1answer
885 views
Modify the last-name first-name separator in biblatex's authortitle
Using the example below, how could I modify the separator between last name and the initial? Currently this is a comma e.g. Fox, P. and it should be just a space: Fox P.
And a similar problem: How ...
36
votes
5answers
1k views
Upright parentheses in italic text
This question led to a new package:
embrac
Bringhurst, in Elements of Typographic Style, recommends to use upright parentheses in italic text (i.e., write 'a (simple) example' as opposed to 'a ...
16
votes
3answers
509 views
Range of Dates (1999-01 — 2012-12)?
How to typeset range expressed with dash of two ISO8601 dates ?
2010-01--2012-03
or
2010-01---2012-03
or another option ?
15
votes
3answers
5k views
Guillemets in LaTeX («»)
I need the characters «» in my LaTeX document. I'm writing in English though, and I don't want to use Babel. I have the following hack but I'd like a better way:
\newcommand{\q}[1]{{%
\font\larm = ...
10
votes
3answers
2k views
How to enable ligatures for emdash/endash in LuaTeX ?
I cannot switch on ligatures for emdash (---) and endash (--) in LuaLaTeX. Here is my test file:
% !Mode:: "TeX:UTF-8"
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
...
9
votes
5answers
2k views
Dashed box environment
I am new to LaTeX and I'm having a hard time trying to create a dashed box environment without success. Can someone please share a code for a dashed box environment such as the one in the image?
I ...
17
votes
5answers
3k views
Allow line break, but without inserting a dash
I have a sentence that contains a number of long dataset names. I would like to allow LaTeX to break these names at certain positions that I would like to specify somehow just like I can use \- to ...
9
votes
2answers
1k views
How to get the closing single quote in math mode
How to get the closing single quote in math mode. The apostrophe in math mode
is displayed as prime.
\documentclass{article}
...
6
votes
3answers
382 views
lualatex and line breaks after em-dashes
I’ve just installed TeX Live 2012. As mentioned elsewhere on this site, the release history explains that “the parameter \XeTeXdashbreakstate is set to 1 by default, for both xetex and xelatex. This ...
6
votes
1answer
1k views
Biblatex: no period/dot after initials if bibtex-entry firstname is only one letter
After several hours on this webpage, I decided to change to biblatex and have already configured according to my preferences. Apart from an easy way to change the order of certain fields of a given ...
6
votes
2answers
904 views
biblatex, authoryear-icomp: brackets around the year in footnotes
I use biblatex with the cite-style authoryear for footnotes, which results in
Chang et al. 2005, p. 1116.
Faculty guidelines require
Chang et al. (2005), p. 1116.
though.
Which files need ...
5
votes
4answers
2k views
Changing “-” to \textendash
I have a large LaTeX document, where hyphens are typeset with a single dash ("-") throughout. In my font, this shows up as a bold and vertically slightly off-center blob, but I'd like it to look like ...
3
votes
3answers
460 views
Line break in lines with colons
I noticed that if I've got something like this:
one::two::three::four one::two::three::four one::two::three::four
something weird happen:
% the right page margin would be here ...
20
votes
1answer
207 views
Why do ``` and ''' produce outputs with different spaces?
Why do
```
and
'''
produce outputs with different spaces?
\documentclass{article}
\parindent=0pt
\begin{document}
Input:
\begin{verbatim}
```\\
'''
\end{verbatim}
Output:
```\\
'''
...
15
votes
2answers
249 views
Defining \xthinspace: Thin space only if not followed by certain characters
Following this 2005 thread from the XeTeX list, I’ve defined a \spaceddash command and assigned it to the Unicode em-dash character U+2014 “—”:
\documentclass{minimal}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
...
10
votes
1answer
280 views
Old-style figures: Use in references/brackets (e.g. to equations, bibliography) or not?
In my documents I usually use old-style figures for "non-mathematical" numbers. By this I mean for example dates, page numbers, telephone numbers and the like. For tables, results of equations etc. I ...
8
votes
2answers
1k views
siunitx: aligning numbers by decimal points in tables doesn't work for bolded or italicized numbers
This is a follow-up question for Aligning numbers by decimal points in table columns.
User lockstep provided this solution:
\usepackage{siunitx}
\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{S[table-format=3.2]}
...
7
votes
3answers
988 views
Remove colon in the caption of a figure without using caption package
I know that I can Remove colon in the caption of a figure if the caption is empty when I simply use the caption package. But let's say I am using a journal-specific class (e.g. elsarticle) that has ...
6
votes
1answer
615 views
Appendix changes sections and figures numbering
I don't know how to face a strange behavior caused by the appendix package.
I'm using KOMA-Script book class and many other packages (see here: http://pastie.org/1728702)
When I add an appendix (not ...
