12.3.4 @frenchspacing val: Control Sentence Spacing

In American typography, it is traditional and correct to put extra space at the end of a sentence. This is the default in Texinfo (implemented in Info and printed output; for HTML, we don’t try to override the browser). In French typography (and others), this extra space is wrong; all spaces are uniform.

Therefore Texinfo provides the @frenchspacing command to control the spacing after punctuation. It reads the rest of the line as its argument, which must be the single word ‘on’ or ‘off’ (always these words, regardless of the language of the document). Here is an example:

@frenchspacing on
This is text. Two sentences. Three sentences. French spacing.

@frenchspacing off
This is text. Two sentences. Three sentences. Non-French spacing.

produces:

This is text. Two sentences. Three sentences. French spacing.

This is text. Two sentences. Three sentences. Non-French spacing.

@frenchspacing also affects the output after @., @!, and @? (see Ending a Sentence).

@frenchspacing has no effect on the HTML or Docbook output; for XML, it outputs a transliteration of itself (see Output Formats).