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Is a period after an abbreviation the same as an end of sentence period?

Hi, I often use the abbreviations e.g. and i.e. when writing. The period after these abbreviations makes LaTeX to think that it's an end of a sentence and thus starts the next word that follows with some unnecessary indentation or advance. Is there a way to automatically instruct LaTeX to not do this? I believe that one can always design a macro and then use some command like \kern (I'm only guessing here). But before I try to make such a macro, I would like to know if more elegant solutions exist.

Thanks a lot

Community
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yCalleecharan
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  • Very similar to http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/2229/is-a-period-after-an-abbreviation-the-same-as-an-end-of-sentence-period (although probably not a duplicate, the answer is going to be similar!) – Joseph Wright Sep 04 '10 at 11:46
  • The way I understand the question, it is a duplicate. @yCalleecharan if the other question is not what you expect, please tell us. – Caramdir Sep 04 '10 at 11:54
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    Thanks for pointing that a similar question exists. I didn't know. So yes, it's ok for me to close this post. – yCalleecharan Sep 04 '10 at 17:33

1 Answers1

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Personally, I think of "i.e." and "e.g." as just shorthand for "that is" and "for example". Since these are typically written with a comma following them, I put a comma after "i.e." and "e.g.", yielding "i.e.," and "e.g.,". This eliminates the problem for LaTeX.

However, if you want to use them without commas, the natural thing would be to use \ after them, which always produces a normal sized space: e.g.\ and i.e.\.

frabjous
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    That's a US thing, I think. In the UK we don't tend to use commas in these cases. – Joseph Wright Sep 04 '10 at 13:25
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    Thanks. When I write "for example" in full, then I use a comma before and after. But when writing its abbreviation then I don't use any commas at all. – yCalleecharan Sep 04 '10 at 17:16
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    I want to add that I like to put a half-space between the period and the "e", which I think is more typographically correct. To achieve this, write e.\,g. and i.\,e.. – vbwx Jun 21 '17 at 10:27