# Space before referencing an equation

when I label an equation in the equation environment and refer to it via \ref{eq1} and when I write in the text

 Eq. \ref{eq1}


there is a one more white space between Eq. and the reference.

• Welcome to TeX.SX! You can have a look on our starter guide to familiarize yourself further with our format- in particular, could you explicitly say what your question is? – cmhughes Oct 20 '13 at 15:51
• I dont want the additional space between Eq and the number of the equation – lambda1990 Oct 20 '13 at 15:59

This is most likely a visual difference due to the Eq. being considered an end-of-sentence space. You can avoid this by forcing a regular space (that is, Eq.\ \ref{eq1}), or even better, use Eq.~\ref{eq1}, or even more better, add \usepackage{amsmath} to your document preamble and use Eq.~\eqref{eq1}.

Here are the options, visually:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}% http://ctan.org/pkg/amsmath
\begin{document}
A simple quadratic equation:
$$f(x) = ax^2 + bx + c \label{quadratic}$$
\indent See Eq. \ref{quadratic}. \par
See Eq.\ \ref{quadratic}. \par

• @lambda1990: That's unfortunate. Do you use any cross-referencing packages that could influence the way \ref works? Like varioref, cleveref, hyperref, ...? – Werner Oct 20 '13 at 16:54
• @lambda1990: Why not just do a search-and-replace for Eq.  to Eq.~? – Werner Oct 20 '13 at 17:02
• Do a global search and replace of Eq. \ref -> Eq.~\ref. – Mico Oct 20 '13 at 17:02
• @lambda1990: A really ambitious attempt would be to use \let\oldref\ref \def\ref{\unskip\nobreakspace\oldref} in your preamble. But then you can't use \eqref, and other things may break... undoubtedly. – Werner Oct 20 '13 at 17:30