[Tex/LaTex] Should you put citations before or after interpunction

citingpunctuationtypography

This probably also could go to English.SE, but I'm not sure.

When I want to cite a source for a complete sentence, you put the citation before or after the period?

And if you cite for a word, or figure, do you put it before or after the comma?

Please bear in mind my citations are not superscripted, here's an example:

appropriate awards and punishments[4, p.415].

appropriate awards and punishments.[4, p.415]

Equivalent:

when, on January 28[3, p.4],

when, on January 28,[3, p.4]

I have a feeling that for facts I should put it right behind the fact and before the comma, while for sentences it should be after the period, but I do not know for sure.

Best Answer

Until now, I have never spotted non-superscript citation marks after a comma or period. In addition, the marks should be separated by a normal interword space or a non-breaking space, i.e.

appropriate awards and punishments [4, p.415].

and

when, on January 28 [3, p.4],

See page 2 of this PracTeX Journal article for another example.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Proper punctuation after cases environment

You've pretty much enumerated all the sensible options in your question, so I don't know that there's anything else. What I've seen sometimes (IIRC) is to put a comma after each case, and then I guess the period could go at the end of the last one.

[Tex/LaTex] Implementing a sort of “tightened frenchspacing”

I don't understand: the space in "Dr. Doolittle" should be the same as the normal interword space. I've seen nowhere reduced spacing in this case, the only place where reduced spacing is used is between initials: somebody tells to write

D.\,E.~Knuth

instead of

D.~E.~Knuth

(which I prefer, but it's personal preference). In any case, your "non sentence ending periods" should be marked somehow, so why bother?

Note. I usually put the tie before the family name, it's easy to change it to a normal space in case of typesetting problems.

Addition
As I said, the "non sentence ending periods" must be marked somehow. Since you are using \frenchspacing, we can overload \@:

\frenchspacing
\makeatletter
\def\@{\@ifnextchar.{.\,\@gobbledot}{}}
\def\@gobbledot#1{\ignorespaces}
\makeatother

This way

Dr\@. Treemunch i.e\@. a main character in ``The Joy of TeX''

will result in a reduced space after the period. I don't see how "non sentence ending periods" can be recognized automatically, since they can be after uppercase as well as lowercase letters.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Proper punctuation after cases environment

[Tex/LaTex] Implementing a sort of “tightened frenchspacing”

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