LaTeX sometimes puts too much or too little space after periods

Question

LaTeX tries to guess whether a period ends a sentence, in which case it puts extra space after it. Here are two examples where it guesses wrong:

I watched Superm         


        

Answer 1

You can sidestep the spacing issue if you prefer single spaces at the end of sentences: put \frenchspacing on (for older versions of Latex this was a fragile command). Knuth was following the traditional naming in calling it French spacing, although calling double spacing after sentences French spacing has become dominant in publishing.

Dirk Margulis wrote a nice post summarising some of the reasons for the prevalance of single spacing: Space between sentences.