etal.sty

\ProvidesPackage{etal}[2015/04/17 - Extract from local]

\RequirePackage{xspace}

% These are separate from joshua.sty, because I'd like everyone, everywhere,
% to use them, and I realize not everyone wants the baggage of hundreds of
% other macros.
%
% These macros protect you from the following scourges:
%
%  1. Misspelled/mispunctuated ``et al.'', ``cf.'', ``e.g.'', ``i.e.'', ``\'a la'', and ``vis-\'a-vis''.
%
%  2. Too much space after the ``.'' in ``cf.'', etc., because TeX likes to guess
%  that a ``.'' might end a sentence, but ``i.e.'' doesn't end a sentence.
%
%
% \etal:
%
%   I've lost track of the number of papers that have
%
%      et. al.
%      et. al
%      et al
%
%   ``Et'' is Latin for ``and''; it's why the ampersand has the shape it does
%   (particularly the form that looks more like an E with a little T attached below).
%   ``Et al.'' means ``and others''.
%
%   If you don't want to remember all of that, you can still use the \etal macro.
%
%   I can't think of any good reason to put a comma before \etal, and lots of
%   people (including at least one person who does it frequently) think it's wrong.
%
%   If you're in the ``\eg and \ie should always have a comma after'' camp,
%   you presumably agree that \etal should *not* have a comma before,
%   by the same analogy to what you would do if you replaced Latin with English.
%      
%
% \eg and \ie:
%
%   These work whether or not you put a comma after them.  AIUI, there is no
%   consensus on whether you should or shouldn't put a comma after them.
%   I believe the reasonable positions are
%
%      (1) Always put a comma, because if you wrote English instead of Latin,
%          you'd have to use a comma (``(for example a rainbow)'' isn't grammatical;
%          ``(for example, a rainbow)'' is grammatical).
%
%      (2) Put a comma only if it precedes something long: ``(\eg a rainbow)'', but
%          ``(\eg, the absurd kerfuffle over whether or not REDACTED should, like
%          essentially all conferences nowadays, have a code of conduct)''.
%
%      (3) Never put a comma; it's a Latin abbreviation, so it need not behave
%          the same as its English replacement.
%          If what follows is long, use English (\eg ``for example'') instead.
%
%      (4) People care about this?  Seriously?
%
%
% \cf:
%
%   ``Cf.'' means ``compare''; it comes from one Latin word, so it's not ``c.f.''.
%   Note that if you just want the reader to refer to something,
%   ``see'' is about the same length as ``cf.'' but doesn't require
%   knowing a somewhat obscure abbreviation.
%   (Which suggests that, even when you mean ``compare'' and not ``see'',
%   you should probably write ``compare''...)
%
%   I can't think of any reason that you'd want to put a comma after \cf,
%   so I deliberately defeated that possibility by defining it as ``cf.\ ''
%   (which will produce a jarring space before the following comma).
%   If you really want to, you can redefine it to ``cf.\@\xspace''.
%
% \ala, \visavis:
%
%   I *really* can't think of any way these could ever make sense with
%   a comma, or any punctuation, following them, so they also end with ``\ ''.


\newcommand{\etal}{et al.\@\xspace}
\newcommand{\eg}{e.g.\@\xspace}
\newcommand{\ie}{i.e.\@\xspace}

\newcommand{\cf}{cf.\ }

\newcommand{\ala}{\`a la\ }
\newcommand{\visavis}{vis-\`a-vis\ }


% Postscript:
%
% I rarely use these macros; I usually write ``for example'' instead of \eg,
% and ``that is'' instead of \ie.  I think that, in general, when you're trying
% to write technical English, you should write English, not Latin.