Spaces Following Abbreviations, and A Cautionary Tale

# 7 on Reed College's Ten Strange Things You Need to Know about LaTeX says:

• LaTeX will always force a slightly larger space after a period, but with abbreviations like etc., an extra space is incorrect. Place a \ character directly before a period that should not have any space, and put \thinspace directly after. For periods after single letters ( E. coli), LaTeX does not use an extra-large space. Thus, to get et al. and etc., write: et al.\thinspace and etc\.,

Do your own testing.  Limits of typesetting on blogger.com mean I cannot show exactly what my TeXshop version produces, and I suspect it has more specific programming included than is believed by that guide. 



\emph{E. coli} et al. etc.,

     % E. coli et al. etc.,  
     % This line looks best overall.


\emph{E\. coli} et a\l. etc\.,

     % Eċoli et alėtc; 
     % This line has has a "dot-c", a "dot-e", is missing two spaces, and has a squished semi-colon.

\emph{E.\thinspace coli} et al.\thinspace etc.\thinspace,  
     % E. coli et al. etc. ,   
     % E. coli looks best here.  Not enough space after et al.  Obvious space after etc. ,

I think I'll stick with regular spaces unless otherwise indicated by the thesis editing officers.