5.4.6 Text formatting ¶

• Lines should be less than 72 characters long. (We personally recommend writing with 66-char lines, but do not bother modifying existing material). See Syntax survey for recommendations on how to use fixed-width fonts.

  The main reason for using short lines is that it makes it easy later on to add a forgotten @code{...} around a word, say, without the (aesthetical) need to reformat the text. Not reformatting a paragraph makes it much more straightforward to compare small changes with git repository viewers like gitk or TortoiseGit.

• Do not use tabs.
• Do not use spaces at the beginning of a line (except in @example or @verbatim environments), and do not use more than a single space between words. texi2any (which processes the Texinfo source files) copies the input lines verbatim without removing those spaces, and some output formats (plain text and Info) retain them in the generated output.
• Use two spaces after a period.
• In examples of syntax, use @var{musicexpr} for a music expression.
• Don’t use @rinternals{} in the main text. If you’re tempted to do so, you’re probably getting too close to “talking through the code”. If you really want to refer to a context, use @code{} in the main text and @rinternals{} in the @morerefs block.