[Tex/LaTex] Why is there no space behind closing quotation mark in enumeration

punctuationspacing

I'm using the following code:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[dutch]{babel}

\newcommand{\add}{$\oplus$\space}
\newcommand{\ent}{\textit}

\begin{document}

\begin{enumerate}
    \item Content: \add \ent{"Node add form" base form}
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

Unfortunately, there's no spacing after the closing quotation mark in the enumeration. How can I solve this?

Best Answer

Never use " for quotes. In particular, languages where babel uses " as a shorthand will make straight double quotes fail in various ways. The correct form is

Content: \add \ent{``Node add form'' base form}

or, with Unicode characters

Content: \add \ent{“Node add form” base form}

Why " mustn't be used for quotes? It's true that what's printed is, sometimes, the glyph ”, but this character usually has no setting of the \sfcode, which means wrong spacing at sentence ending periods that are typed (as normal in American typography) before the closing quotes.

But the biggest problem is with babel and the many languages for which " is used as a shorthand. The mechanism uses \@ifnextchar and so spaces are ignored after the character, which is exactly what happens in the example.

None of these problems happens when '' or ” are used (the latter of course requires a suitable call of inputenc). Good editors can be set up so that typing " triggers a proper action. For instance, with Emacs and AUCTeX, typing " will produce `` if after a space (or at the beginning of a line), '' otherwise; typing another " produces a single ".

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