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Bit of a newbie question. I have read somewhere (can't seem to find it now) that if you wish to write Mr. John Doe or Dr. Jane Doe that LaTeX with treat the . as a full stop and add an extra space.

Is there a simple way of writing Dr./Mr.etc in LaTeX so an additional space is not added.

gman
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  • Do you already tried to do what you're asking? How did you do? Could you add a MWE about it? – Aradnix Sep 26 '14 at 17:36
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    You can write Dr.~Gman or Dr.\ Gman. The former option (~) is a non-breaking space, so a line would not break after Dr., which might lead to undesired results. – Adam Liter Sep 26 '14 at 17:42
  • @AdamLiter Thanks; the duplicate question is where I was reading it. I just couldn't find it today when searching. – gman Sep 26 '14 at 17:45
  • I disagree that this is a duplicate question. See my comment on this question. – Peter Wilson Sep 26 '14 at 18:16

1 Answers1

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The standard way to do this, I believe, is to use '~' between Mr./Mrs./Dr. and the following name. This has two effects: it eliminates the extra space, as you want, and also prevents the person's title and their name from being split on two separate lines. For instance:

 I was talking to Dr.~Sparks yesterday, who said\ldots

If you just want a single space, and don't want to disallow the line break, I believe you can use \ (backslash then space).

p_a_c
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    In the UK, and also recommended by Robert Bringhurst ("The Elements of Typographic Style") for North America: do not use a full stop (period) after an abbreviation that ends with the same letter as the full word. Hence Dr Jones, Mrs Jones, St Jones, but Prof. Jones, Capt. Jones. – Peter Wilson Sep 26 '14 at 18:09
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    @PeterWilson -- Bringhurst is, incidentally perhaps (I've never read his book), palaeographically correct: the 'dot' was used in abbreviations to mark that the rest of the word was being suspended --- so "i.e." for id est, "e.g." for exempli gratia, etc. Often, when the 'middle' part of the word was being omitted, other conventions were used, notably a horizontal line over (some of) the letters that were not being omitted (see here). American conventions, sadly(?) do not maintain this distinction.... – jon Sep 26 '14 at 20:52