Because of the usual manner in which the French word Monsieur is abbreviated, I have often encountered a chapter beginning something like this:
M. Nom
In typesetting such (making use of a lettrine), I get, what seems to me to be a somewhat large amount of space between the period and the word immediately following; for example, consider the output produced by the following code:
\documentclass[12pt]{book}
\oddsidemargin 17pt \evensidemargin 18pt \topmargin 35pt \headheight 25pt \textheight 8.5in \textwidth 5.75in \headsep 40pt \marginparwidth 35pt
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\input GoudyIn.fd
\newcommand*\initfamily{\usefont{U}{GoudyIn}{xl}{n}}
\usepackage{lettrine}
\usepackage{color}
\definecolor{olivegreen}{cmyk}{0.64,0,0.95,0.40}
\renewcommand{\LettrineFontHook}{\initfamily{}}
\setcounter{DefaultLines}{3}
\renewcommand{\DefaultLoversize}{.47}
\begin{document}
\thispagestyle{empty}
\large
\lettrine{\color{olivegreen}{M}}{. Vianney} comprit qu'{\`{a}} son z{\`{e}}le s'opposerait un ennemi redoutable: toute la force d'inertie de gens ancr{\'{e}}s dans leurs habitudes.
\end{document}
QUESTION: Typographically speaking, is there a rather large amount of space between the period following the lettrine and {\scshape{Vianney}}? If so, how may I uniformily reduce the horizontal space to something more appropriate for all such instances in a document (without resorting, say, to the use of forceful negative hskip
s)?
Thank you.
findent
andnindent
— but the result is likely to look odd with Goudy’s initials. “For all such instances” may not be possible unless you have an initial M only in this context..
being treated as the end of a sentence instead of an abbreviation..\space
and{.}
result in a smaller gap..\@
would.