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When I write in french I often have to use the inclusive form:

  • The students did their homework.
  • Les étudiant·e·s ont fait leurs devoirs.

However, it is not easy to get a good-looking example with LaTeX. The .e.s doesn't break properly at the end of lines.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\setmainlanguage{french}

\catcode`\·=13 \def\cdottext{\ensuremath\cdot} \let·\cdottext%

\begin{document}
Les étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s ingénieur·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s ingénieur·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s ingénieur·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s ingénieur·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s étudiant·e·s
\end{document}

enter image description here

Are there any tools to facilitate inclusive form in french?

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  • 1
    Perhaps this would be helpful to you: tex.stackexchange.com/q/419283
    – Jinwen
    May 20, 2022 at 18:38
  • The French way of doing this has nothing in common with any of the German approaches …
    – Ingmar
    May 21, 2022 at 11:42
  • I couldn’t exactly reproduce what I have in my document. It seems the .e.s will never break and sometime it goes over the end of line
    – nowox
    May 21, 2022 at 12:59
  • Although PicNic is not suitable for most purposes, studying the way it implements “inclusive ligatures” as Open Type features may be instructive.
    – Thérèse
    May 22, 2022 at 15:53

1 Answer 1

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The mathematical symbols $\cdot$ around the "e" in "étudiantes" prevent hyphenation, which may lead to insufficient line breaking options. You can circumvent this by preceding the $\cdot$ with a zero-width kern:

\def\cdottext{\kern0pt\ensuremath\cdot}

(Appendix H of The TeXbook states that "a box or rule or math formula or discretionary following too closely upon the trial word will inhibit hyphenation.")

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  • In your example you use Latin Modern as (default) text font. I would suggest to switch to a font (Libertinus, Erewhon, kpfonts, etc.) which have a proper "middle dot" (U+00B7) character and to drop the \cdottext workaround.
    – Daniel Flipo
    May 23, 2022 at 8:40

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