General ⇒ Forcing LaTeX to "single space" exclamation point

[string beans theory]

I'm typesetting stories where there are, among other things, a lot of non-terminal exclamation points (e.g. "No! No! No! he shouted angrily.") I know how to fix the problem manually via the special spacing commands. However, I want this done automatically the way (La)TeX already "single spaces" commas (and periods in certain special cases). In other words, I want single space to be the default for exclamation points, while retaining the usual sentence spacing defaults for periods, question marks, etc. (\frenchspacing is therefore not an option.)

Thanks!

[gmedina]

Hi,

you can use some of the features provided by the babel package to define and manage user-defined shorthands:

Code: Select all

\documentclass[english]{article}
\usepackage{babel}
\defineshorthand{!}{!\negthinspace}% define the shorthand
\useshorthands{!}% activate the user-defined shorthand(s)

\begin{document}

No! No! No!

\shorthandoff{!}% deactivate some shorthand(s)
No! No! No!

\shorthandon{!}% activate some shorthand(s)
No! No! No!

\end{document}